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‘Blue Door’ @ Theatre in the Square
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A-
Something is eating away at Lewis, the mathematician at the center of Tanya Barfield’s emotionally riveting play “Blue Door.” Something far deeper than his recent divorce. Something that’s probably connected to the shadow figure peeping through the window of his handsomely decorated study.
As the playwright pulls back a curtain to reveal Lewis’ troubled interior world, he is visited by the accumulated sorrows of his ancestors, all represented by that mysterious doppelganger who hijacks his consciousness and takes him on a guided tour of his horrific past.
Masterfully written and beautifully executed by director Gary Yates’ two-man cast, “Blue Door” is getting a superb production at Marietta’s Theatre in the Square. Easily the best stage experience Atlanta has to offer at the given moment, this searing drama operates like a full-out exorcism in which the demons of slavery and the Jim Crow era are painfully purged from memory.
Barfield is not the first writer to explore what she calls the “cultural amnesia” of African-Americans. But her study of Lewis (Rob Cleveland) is so thoroughly imaginative, her structure so fine and smartly calculated, that the material feels newly urgent and intimate.
The playwright packs the essential concerns of August Wilson’s sprawling 10-play cycle into a single one-act capsule. In a remarkable feat of storytelling, the inhabitants of Lewis’ family saga are all ingeniously portrayed by a single actor.
Here that’s Eric J. Little, a virtuosic human chameleon with unsinkable energy and comedic brio. While Lewis is pretty much a static figure, his memory is crowded by a stunning array of people — grandfathers, slave owners, his brother — and the charismatic Little imbues each of them with high spirits and heartbreak. Though Cleveland builds toward Lewis’ epiphany with a slow, steady grace, this is ultimately Little’s show.
According to family lore, one of Lewis’ ancient grandmothers painted her door blue to keep the good spirits in and the bad ones out. In airing out the corners of his mind, that’s exactly what Lewis does. It’s a painful act of self-discovery that ennobles us all.
THE 411: 8 p.m Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Through March 16. $15-$20. Theatre in the Square, Alley Stage, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369, theatreinthesquare.com
BOTTOM LINE: Intensely moving.
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