"Father Comes Home From the Wars" at ACT

ACT photo my Joan Marcus

Suzan-Lori Parks is perhaps the modern playwright I have been most curious about. I hear raves about her work, but until now I had not seen any of them performed. So I've been looking forward to the current offering at ACT since I saw the season announcement last year.

The Play

Father Comes Home from the Wars is a really ambitious project. Sort of like Star Wars, it is a nine-part saga that apparently consists of three related trilogies. Unlike those movies, though, Parks has decided to start at the beginning, so we currently see Parts I, II, and III. My understanding is that the subsequent parts are not yet written.

Anyway, the three "parts" serve as essentially three acts in a long afternoon or evening of theater. The whole presentation is about three hours long, with each of the parts taking up approximately an hour. ACT puts an intermission between parts II and III, although part III is the shortest of the three. I will just refer to these three parts as "the play" for purposes of this article, since together they are the play we saw.

The play is quite loosely based on The Odyssey by Homer. The central character, Hero, is a slave whose owner is going off to join the American Civil War as an officer. He gives Hero the choice of whether to accompany him. Part I consists of a group of slaves (and later, Hero himself) debating whether and why Hero should go. It's actually a pretty interesting discussion and dilemma. On the one hand, it's hard work in the service of an army dedicated to preserving the institution of slavery, so an obvious conflict for Hero. On the other hand, the master has promised Hero his freedom if he goes with him, which is terribly, terribly tempting. Complicating matters is the revelation that the master has promised freedom once before, and reneged.

This part is really well written and realized. The slaves act as kind of a Greek chorus behind Hero and his not-quite-wife, Penny. A character called the Oldest Old Man serves as both a surrogate father to hero and a source of wisdom for the group. On the whole I found this first act quite compelling and interesting.

In Part II we are off to the war, where we see the master (now known as The Colonel) and Hero (spoiler...he ends up going to war) in a rough camp with an injured Union prisoner named Smith. Here the issues and temptations are different, and the nature of the play changes, too. We get longer, more drawn-out, and thoughtful discussions of issues and ethical questions. How to treat this officer, captured from leading a regiment of free Negro soldiers? Is he actually their white officer, or a Negro soldier passing for white? The relations of both The Colonel and Hero to Smith get pretty interesting. Presented with the temptation of escape, perhaps to join the Union army, how will Hero choose?

And finally in Part III, we have Penny and another slave, Homer, back home awaiting Hero's return from the war, in the temporary company of a group of runaway slaves. We get more of the backstory of Homer, Penny, and Hero, as well as a look at how Penny and Homer have been keeping busy in Hero's absence. And then when Hero arrives, there are more choices and a number of secrets that have to be dealt with. And Hero's dog (missing, in a running gag in Part I) arrives home ahead of Hero and narrates much of what has happened. Yes, a talking dog.

I thought Part III was probably the weakest writing of the whole (and not just because of the talking dog, but really). But it does wrap up a lot of the story lines, and leaves enough dangling that we have the promise of some interesting developments for Parts IV and onward to follow succeeding generations.

The play is long (epic, one might say), but it holds interest in part because it is well crafted and coherent. There are enough twists and turns to maintain some suspense and foil any predictions one might have made. It's just good writing, with some quite interesting characters.

The Production

ACT is presenting Father Comes Home in association with Yale Repertory Theatre, and the play actually opened first at Yale Rep, so even though I saw this fairly early in the San Francisco run, the show was quite polished and smooth. All the staging and lighting and such have come from Yale, though expanded a bit for the Geary Theater's larger stage.

Also, the cast is intact, as far as I can tell, and that really helps. One big highlight in the cast for me was Steven Anthony Jones as the Oldest Old Man. I'm a long-time fan of Jones, but was rather disappointed by his work in ACT's Hamlet earlier this season. But here he was reminiscent of his best work, which was a delight to see. Local fixture Dan Hiatt was quite good as The Colonel, as well.

Some younger local actors had good turns in the show, too. Rotimi Agbabiaka, last seen in Shotgun's Black Rider, and Safiya Fredericks, recently in ACT's The Hard Problem and the Magic's Grandeur (among other shows) stand out in the ensemble of slaves. I was also impressed with Tom Pecinka as Smith and Eboni Flowers as Penny. James Udom does a fine turn as Hero, which is quite a demanding role. Longtime ACT company member Gregory Wallace seems a bit out of place until he surfaces as the talking dog, which is a role he seems destined for.

All in all, it's a fine production, well designed. It probably doesn't need to be three hours long. I suspect some judicious editing could trim some of Parks' text that gets a little repetitive, but on the whole, it's fine. The nature of the subject matter kind of requires that it be a bit drawn out, so it's hard to complain on that score.

Bottom Line

This is well worth seeing. The material is strong, and the production is polished and coherent. I'm glad I finally got to see one of Parks' plays, and I look forward to more. (I just picked up a copy of the script to Topdog/Underdog so I can read it, and I see that Ubuntu Theater Company is about to stage that show.)

The show runs through May 20th, so you still have many chances to see it.