Native Son is the best play yet in the Intiman’s annual American Cycle.
I started this blog criticizing the last installment, Grapes of Wrath, for its lack of passion and immediacy. Native Son is the opposite – in your face and up your alley from opening to duplicate close of an entirely naked Bigger Thomas on stage, staring you down with a crazed look in his eye.
Never mind that there’s little call for so much nakedness – based on my theatrical experience in Seattle and elsewhere, it seems to be something actors and actresses enjoy doing. You’ve got to be a bit of an exhibitionist to enter the profession in the first place, after all.
Here it betokens the naked revelation of this character’s interior life we’ll be privy too throughout, via vocalized interior monologue and extreme examples of acting out.
(time for a shower – to be continued later)
