As one of the Straight White Men from the obviously provocative title, I wondered how Young Jean Lee, an experimental female Korean-American GenX playwright would deal with MY privilege. I grew up as society morphed from the strictures of “Mad Men” through the tumultuous ‘60s. The pill spawned feminism, giving women the same sexual freedom men took for granted and opening doors for women to pursue careers. Concurrently, LBJ and MLK tried to create a more level playing field for people of color, and Stonewall gave LGBTQIA+ folks the courage to open the closet doors. Sadly, though, change is slow and as we learned on Jan. 6th, too many Americans are still threatened by equality.
What Ms. Lee and the high-octane actors at Tampa Rep led by director, Emilia Sargent, deliver is not the obvious screed one might expect, but a nuanced look inside the complicated family dynamics as three brothers descend upon their widowed father to celebrate Christmas complete with stockings, eggnog and holiday pajamas. But the genius of the play is a framing device, beautifully realized here, of having a trio of women who are simply “Persons in Charge.” Each represents oppressed minorities often excluded from the obvious privilege enjoyed by the men onstage. It’s Ron DeSantis’s DEI nightmare: an imagined world where trans, native, Latin, bi, Black, autistic, etc. people pull the strings.
These three charismatic women (Berry Ayers, Gabby Cabrera, Randi J. Norman) work the audience pre-show and later each has a chance to shine through a personal story/song. Costumer Meli Mossey makes sure that each one is distinct & unmissable—from black leather pants, day-glo and pink ensembles, and even zebra boots. The trio hovers over the action, in the audience, on the stairs, and even on occasion bringing the robotic brothers on stage and placing them in positions that reflect arrested development leading to cheerful trash-talking, energetic pranks, and an Xmas feast of Chinese takeout. Not to mention a hilarious version of Oklahoma choreographed by Michelle Petrucci that somehow morphs into a KKK tribute. It’s just one of several spot-on dance routines conjured from the brother’s youthful exploits.
As an aging SWM Boomer, I could easily be the father Ed Norton (a name stolen from the early sitcom, “The Honeymooners”) and here embodied with quiet strength by Don Walker, who largely functions as the straight man without the slapstick schtick of his three adult sons. The youngest son, Drew (James Putnam), is a hotshot novelist/professor who relentlessly extols the virtues of therapy for all. Jake (James Sorensen), is the middle son, an obnoxious banker living a comfortable BMW life. Despite having a Black ex-wife and two bi-racial kids, he confesses an inability to escape his myopic elevation of whiteness.
Oldest brother Matt (Christopher Marshall), once the family’s great white hope from Harvard, is in a soft-spoken office temp job “making copies for the oppressed,” and living with dad. Burdened by decades of student debt and an unexplained failure to thrive as expected, he’s a self-described loser. As the most socially conscious and sensitive of the lot, Matt just wants to be “useful,” but the family’s expectations for what he, as a privileged, highly-educated, straight, white man, should do with his life becomes a dance (sometimes literally) around the elephant in the room: how to explain and deal with Matt’s sense of ennui.
The boy’s late mother created a “Privilege” version of Monopoly to remind her sons to be aware of what they were given and to escape the clutches of entitlement. Set designer Jim Sorensen has given the late mother’s game an omnipresence by wrapping the square set with two sides of the game board. One for each bank of audience members who flank the two downstage edges of the intimate USF black box. There are spaces for Divine, Larry Kramer, Rosa Parks, Denial, Excuses (blah, blah, blah), MLK, Red-lined mortgages, “Pay $100 as you pass GO if you’re white,” Harvey Milk, Gloria Steinem, Sacagawea and Sitting Bull.
Photo by Ashley Emrick Photography
The boy’s late mother created a “Privilege” version of Monopoly to remind her sons to be aware of what they were given and to escape the clutches of entitlement.
There is an upper level runway above the naturalistic, bourgeois beige living room evocatively lit by Keith Eisenstadt, which allows the three persons in charge each to command a moment to put their personal journeys in the spotlight. Needless to say, these stories/songs/performances of acceptance are in sharp contrast to travails and antics of the straight white men.
The play is a broadly comedic, yet compassionate exploration of the ways in which white men are both shaped by and complicit in systems of oppression. Identity is subjective. There is no one right way to be a man—or a human, for that matter.
Director Sargent confesses she’s moved by the playwright’s conclusion that “you can have empathy for people without just leveling out all human experience as we all suffer equally.”
The universal despair of the play affects people of all backgrounds. In a world where worth is determined by economic output, can good people like Matt still be useful?
The play ends with a surprising application of “tough love” which leaves us with more questions than simple answers, which clearly was Ms. Lee’s intention. By upending our expectations, we’re forced to confront our natural biases on the bumpy road to empathy.
Tickets to see Tampa Rep's "Straight White Men" on select nights through Feb. 18 at The University of South Florida are still available and start at $12.
