3/5/2025 From the Bookshelf: DPS Broadway Book Club Collection # 10
STILL RESOLVED IN 2025: I’M ACTUALLY READING MORE SCRIPTS!
Welcome to another edition of “Plays I should have Read Months ago.” This was the 4th Quarter package from last year, so, of course, I am already hip deep in the 1st Quarter package from this year (not to mention all the scripts I picked up during my Thanksgiving spree at the Drama Book Shop.) I will not acknowledge that I have an addiction.
To repeat (for the tenth time), script publisher Dramatists Play Service runs a book club, where, once a quarter, they will deliver to your doorstep a box of scripts, curated by an established playwright, brimming with talent and creative life force. I look forward to every shipment as, to put it bluntly, I love reading scripts, even those for plays I know not and may never see brought to life on stage.
November’s package was not curated by a playwright, but by DPS Staff members. Seven managers, directors, and vice presidents (including one “SVP”) have put their tastes on the line to put together a collection that proved to be compelling and provocative, including some plays I knew, some I did not, and even one currently in production in Atlanta. Huzzah! So without further ado (aka “throat clearing” to my 1973 Creative Writing Professor), herewith are this quarter’s thumbnails.
JAJA’S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING
By Jocelyn Bioh
World Premiere by Manhattan Theatre Club, NYC, September 2023
Atlanta Production by Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre, opened 2/11/2025 (Closes March 9)
I wrote a full preview of this just last week, so nothing more needs to be added here. It’s a hot summer day in Harlem, and the stylists and patrons (mostly African immigrants of varying legal status) at Jaja’s African Hair Braiding salon sweat and bicker and bond. A funny and moving portrait of women at work, surviving and (maybe) even prospering. You owe it to yourself to see this one.
BROOKLYN LAUNDRY
By John Patrick Shanley
Originally Produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club, NYC February 6, 2024
Another memorable Romance from John Patrick Shanley (“Moonstruck”). Family and a new romance are in conflict, as Fran meets and connects with Owen, the owner of a Brooklyn Laundry that seems to have lost her laundry. But Fran’s sister needs her more than Fran needs connection – that time in her life is a distant memory. I liked this one, as I like most of Shanley’s work. Yes, it’s a romantic comedy, but the characters face real issues, not mere difficulties. As usual, Shanley’s characters are unique and recognizable, and his dialogue simply sings off the page.
FLEX
By Candrice Jones
Zoom Reading by Theatrical Outfit’s Downtown Dialogues October 2020
World Co-Premiere by TheatreSquared (Fayettevile AR) and by Theatrical Outfit (Atlanta GA) Sept 2022
New York Premiere Lincoln Center Theatre June 2023
Another Atlanta show – I saw and reviewed the 2020 Zoom Reading but missed the 2022 production. It’s 1998 and newly-formed WNBA is offering poor (female) basketballers a road to the majors. The Lady Train team is a talented group of young women facing all the trials and tribulations of being adolescent and poor as they squabble and bond and, above all else play basketball. This play is constantly moving – I commented that it was miraculous that the 2020 Zoom reading seemed so energetic and fluid. It is populated by vivid characters and graced with dynamically active dialogue. These girls talk like real teenagers (at least how I remembered teenagers of 1998 talking), but they face very adult problems – pregnancy and poverty, just to cite the obvious two. This was surprisingly a bit hard to read – it is filled with stage directions that require a modicum of basketball knowledge, much of which was beyond me – but it still had the same effect it had when I saw the reading. I still don’t know what the titular “Flex” maneuver involves – Ms. Jones leaves the specifics of it to directors and their Basketball advisors. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting these young women, and seeing them go through their paces.
Find my review of the 2020 Zoom Reading HERE.
CAMP SIEGFRIED
By Bess Wohl
US Premiere at Second Stage Theater NYC 2022
World Premiere at the Old Vic Theatre London England September 2021
So. It’s 1938 and a lonely young teenager finds herself at a Long Island Summer Camp that (supposedly) celebrates her German Heritage. There she meets an equally lonely young man. As it turns out, the camp is the notorious Camp Siegfried, based on the real camp run by the German American Bund, an historical (and effective) plan to indoctrinate America’s youth with Nazi ideology. For the two teens (the play’s entire cast), it becomes a race between the need to conform and the need to be loved.
This is a dark (sometimes darkly funny) examination of the insidious nature of propaganda and the vulnerability of young minds to its effect. Ultimately moving and memorable, this is a perfect piece for a small black box venue.
MAMBO MOUTH
By John Leguizamo
Originally Produced Off-Broadway at the American Place Theater, December 1990
This is another of Mr. Leguizamo’s (Spic-O-Rama, Latin History for Morons) many monologues, examining and celebrating Latinx-American life. (Actually, it was his first to be produced.) This is a trenchant portrait of seven people that can be performed by seven actors or by a single versatile artist (as Mr. Leguizamo did in the original). These characters run the gamut – men and women (and more), old and young, pleasant and downright despicable --all facing crucial moments of life and conflict and failure/success. To be honest, I pictured Mr. Leguizamo as all the characters but I’d love to see it staged with a full roster of artists. Funny and moving (often at the same time), it brings to the forefront and ultimately demolishes what may be our nonconscious preconceptions of Latinx culture, stubbornly celebrating the fact that there is no “monolithic” generalization that can be made, but insisting that like any other culturally distinct group, it is more compelling at the individual level.
THE WHITE CHIP
By Sean Daniels
Originally Produced by the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, January 2016
Atlanta Production at Theatrical Outfit Jan/Feb 2023
Off-Broadway production at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, 2024
Dad’s Garage Co-Founder Sean Daniels penned this primal scream of a comedy about his fall into addiction and his eventual recovery. Steven is an Atlanta Theatre director/artist who is also a high-functioning alcoholic. An eclectic series of scenes painfully (and sometimes hysterically) shows his efforts to hide his addiction from his co-workers, his employers, and (with less success), his spouse(s). The optimistic outcome follows him on the road to recovery. Atlanta audiences may (or may not) recognize some familiar (albeit semi-fictionalized) incidents and people from Mr. Daniel’s Atlanta work, including his current (and presumably final) spouse. This is a gripping read that really made me regret missing the Theatrical Outfit production.
THE MAKING OF A GREAT MOMENT
By Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
Originally Produced by the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, 2017
New York Premiere at Urban Stages, 2023
Another two-hander, this one follows the members of the “Victoria Canada Bicycle Theater Company” as they bring a not-as-improvised-as-it-should-be “Great Moments in Human Achievement” event to small venues across Canada, often to sleepily inattentive (or hostile) retirement center audiences, as they bicycle across Canada. This one is full of recognizable theatre types and “Easter Eggs,” and gets added energy from the two characters, often at odds, often exhausted after a long day on the road, and is a total joy to read. And, of course, it raises the question, after days and days of presenting this overlong litany of Great Moments in Humanity, will they find a “Great Moment” of their own?
I hope you get a chance to check out any (or all) of these plays and hope you find them as satisfying to read as I did. Better yet, I hope they create a desire to see them live on stage!
As usual, thank you for indulging my Bibliowallow! There will be more soon! In fact, the first two in the next set are total knockouts, one of which, Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor is the Villain,” will be opening on Broadway in a couple weeks. You’ll never read (or see) “The Crucible” (or hear Lorde’s “Green Light” in the same way after reading this one.
-- Brad Rudy (BKRudy@aol.com)
#DramatistsPlayService