Theater/Dance
A New Native Son
By Carol Chastang—SeeingBlack.com Theater Critic
Apr 28, 2009, 11:17

Ja-Ben Early and Farah Lawal in Native Son. Photo by Micah Hutz

There are several reasons why the theater adaptation of Richard Wright’s groundbreaking novel Native Son is rarely staged. The original production opened on Broadway on March 24, 1941 and was directed by Orson Welles, who at the time was waiting for the release of "Citizen Kane." His Mercury Theater Company partner John Houseman was the first to read the novel Native Son, and he persuaded Wright to adapt it for the theater. Writer Paul Green, who had won the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “In Abraham’s Bosom”—a piece about the plight of African-American men in the South—was enlisted by Wright to help write the script.


The play ran for 114 performances and closed on June 28. At the time, the fact that it even ran that long was considered a triumph. Wright’s uncompromising, brutal indictment of the forces in American society that bred the restless anger that spilled out of Bigger Thomas’ life was a bit much for the mostly White theater audience to stomach.


Nearly 70 years after Native Son first opened, it is still seen as an intimidating work to produce. Unlike the more mainstream tale of Black struggle “A Raisin in the Sun,” Native Son’s story doesn’t have a happy ending, and its protagonist, at best, is a reluctant hero who is compelled to rely on violence to rise above his sense of powerlessness.


Director Bob Bartlett brilliantly rises to the challenge in The American Century Theater’s production of Native Son at Gunston Theater II in Arlington, Virginia. The play crackles with energy, despite the hopelessness of the characters lives and the foreshadowing of doom.


It’s 1939 in Chicago, and using a baseball bat to kill rats scurrying about the small apartment is one of the few diversions that bring a sense of fun and accomplishment to Bigger Thomas (the amazing JaBen A. Early). As he argues with his mother and sister about the urgency of finding work and shrugs off their concerns, you can see Bigger is recklessly thinking of a way out. Early does an excellent job of creating the menacing persona of the 19-year-old Bigger. Despite his good looks and somewhat soft features, Early generates a nervous and explosive energy that’s like a time bomb ticking relentlessly.


The social worker who describes Bigger as a young man possessing “an unstable equilibrium” helps him land a position as a chauffeur in the home of the wealthy Dalton family. The blind Mrs. Dalton (Danni Stewart) is warm and non-judgmental. Daughter Mary (Julie Roundtree) is a pampered heiress and an alcoholic who considerers herself an activist for the working class. “Do you belong to a union?” she naively asks Bigger when they meet for the first time. “You better join a union or father will exploit your shirt off.” Mary the Communist thinks she’s trying to connect with Bigger, who feels her manner is arrogantly condescending.



Bigger drives Mary and her boyfriend Jan Erlone (Evan Crump) to a South Side diner, and they ask him to join them for dinner and drinks. Hours later, Bigger carries the drunken Mary to her bed. As he tries to leave, terrified of what will happen if he’s caught in this white girl’s bedroom, she throws her arms around his neck and kisses him. As Mrs. Dalton wanders into the room, Bigger tries to silence Mary with a pillow and ends up suffocating her. He decides to dispose of her body in the furnace. Despite his awareness of the consequences, Bigger feels somewhat empowered.


The stage adaptation, while faithful to the book, dispenses with the other violent acts Bigger commits before his arrest. As the trial ends, Bigger’s lawyer Edward Max (the extraordinary Bud Stringer), given an impassioned plea for his client’s life. Looking and carrying himself like a cross between James Whitmore and Spencer Tracy, Max walks slowing back and forth on the stage, trying to shine a light on Bigger’s humanity, while castigating the forces that created his violent responses to the world.


“Bigger is a victim of a way of life, a chain of woeful circumstances,” Max says. The real guilt lies, he continues, with a nation that traps an entire group and forces them to live and die on the margins of society like the rats hiding in the walls of the Chicago tenements.


But the jury doesn’t buy Max’s arguments, and neither, for that matter, does Bigger. “Mary Dalton made me feel like a dog,” he says before being led away for execution. “I hated her. I always wanted to be my own man, and when I killed that girl that’s how I felt…FREE.”


Much has changed since 1941, and much remains the same, which is why this beautifully staged production of Native Son is so important. And like the anti-hero Bigger, this play was somewhat marginalized, tucked away in a small theater in Northern Virginia.


The American Century Theater production of “Native Son” runs at the Gunston Theatre II, 2700 South Lang Street in Arlington, Virginia through May 9, 2009. For ticket information go to www.AmericanCentury.org, or call 703-998-4555.

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