Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman is a powerful, shocking, and finally poignant play about light-skinned and dark-skinned African Americans in South Carolina in the late 20th century. Following two in particular — dark-skinned Alma, played brilliantly by Fanni Green, and “high yella” Eugene, portrayed sensitively by the impressive Jim Wicker (who is himself white) — Orlandersmith shows us how prejudice within a small community can shatter lives, wreck futures, split families and define the whole world. Green and Wicker also play Alma and Eugene’s parents and schoolmates, and they’re so successful at doing so, you’ll walk out of the theater thinking you just saw not two but a dozen actors, each wonderfully talented and crushingly authentic.Yellowman was a Pulitzer Prize finalist nine years ago, and, in my estimation, it might easily have won. This is theater so honest it hurts — and if you’ve ever been the target of someone’s bigotry, or of your own self-doubt and loathing, it will speak to you eloquently. For reasons I can’t fathom, there were lots of empty seats on opening night at the Straz Center, so maybe I need to spread the word: this Jobsite Theater production is fascinating theater whatever your color, and so wrenching it’s cathartic. Catch it if you can.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2011.