Keystone directs with sensitivity, giving an emotional center to draw the audience into a world that is familiar yet alien. The play is about America, but not everyone's America. Perhaps this is why Parks' directions enigmatically set her American play in "a great hole. In the middle of nowhere. The hole is an exact replica of The Great Hole of History."
There is, indeed, a "great hole" of history. It is in our comprehension. We have strange ideas of history because of the movies we watch and in the texts we have in schools. Comprehension of history is better today than before multiculturalism became a buzz word in education, yet what we learn of history is often biased when it's chosen who gets "a place in the hall of wonders."
Surrat's Lincoln impersonator emanates gravity and earnest pride, making his desertion of wife and family more acceptable. Brooks, playing his wife, embodies the strength and faith that bypasses bitterness and holds to the good in the present. Truly gives Brazil a sense of wonder as well as the curiosity of a boy attempting to discover his father, and in that his disjointed and hidden heritage.
Parks, whose recent play Topdog/Underdog won a 2002 Pultizer Prize for Drama and a Tony nomination, wrote The America Play early in her career. It treads in Brecht's abstract landscape, so it isn't for everyone. It isn't everyone's history, either. But it is real enough to be someone's American history. Only by thinking about the totality of such slices of Americana can we begin to see beyond mainstream versions of history to something like reality.
The America Play, Theatre@Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor, Pasadena. Call (626) 683-6883 or visit the Web site.
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