Broadway’s ‘American Son’ Starring Kerry Washington Is the Most Vacuous Kind of Race Play: REVIEW

An elder black lieutenant is dressing down a distraught mother at a police station in the middle of the night. “I’ll tell ya — two minutes with you, I know your whole adult life,” the cop (Eugene Lee) tells the light-skinned black woman, played by Kerry Washington. His presumptions are based on the proximity to whiteness that being married to a white man provide her. By now, the audience at American Son, which opened at Broadway’s Booth Theatre tonight, has spent over an hour in her company and cannot claim any such familiarity with her life.

The most common and deadly pitfall of any drama that attempts to address social ills — as American Son so bluntly does with racism and police brutality — is the failure to root polemics in believable human drama. A noble-minded Broadway debut from Miami playwright Christopher Demos-Brown, directed by Broadway vet Kenny Leon, American Son is an Issue Play with as many holes in its center as the box of donuts on the table (because, yes, police just really like them!). It is a blunt, and frankly unsophisticated, primer on a deeply urgent crisis that blandly panders to those without skin in the game.  

When lights come up on a black woman in a police station, the pit in her gut is one any mother can imagine. But there is particular chill to the dread felt by a mother whose son is 6’2”, 185 lbs, with cornrows and even fair-black skin. She fought with him earlier that evening; he drove off and hasn’t returned home. A phone call to the police revealed his car had been involved in “an incident,” so here she is pleading for details and continuing to fill his voicemail box.

Nearly every turn the story takes from here is grossly overdetermined, starting with the glib young officer (Jeremy Jordan) who patronizes her and spews casual racism as soon as she’s out of earshot. That Demos-Brown describes this character in the script as someone who is “always trying to do the right thing” but “often says the wrong thing at the wrong time” betrays the playwright’s keen lack of insight, disguised behind an epigraph by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It may feel unfair to point to the limits of his subjectivity as the white, 54-year-old male author of a play about race, but what does it say that he preemptively excuses his own character’s racism before the play even begins?

Totems of their skin colors, Washington’s character and the missing boy’s father (Steven Pasquale) engage in a fraught tug-of-war that casts their unseen ‘American Son’ as a nexus of the country’s struggles with racial difference and class disparity. Never mind that it’s never really clear what happened to their marriage or why they haven’t talked about it until now. Instead, rudimentary arguments about respectability politics and the pressures of being “the face of the race” take up any air that might have signaled living, breathing characters.

A more adept stage actress might have had a better chance at lending dimension to Demos-Brown’s flat central figure, but Washington’s performance strikes the only note that’s called for with a numbing monotony. Pasquale, whose character also just so happens to be an officer of the law described as having “obvious contained power” that “when pushed can explode,” fares a bit better. It doesn’t help. Did I mention that it’s also a dark and stormy night?

Perhaps some Broadway patrons will feel as though they’ve been awakened here, by alarm bells that somehow escaped their ears until now. For this, and for having witnessed something vaguely suggestive of black pain, American Son also gives its audience a pat on the back. But anyone prepared for a deeper understanding of the truth need only open their eyes once they step back outside.

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Follow Naveen Kumar on Twitter: @Mr_NaveenKumar
(photos: peter cunningham)

The post Broadway’s ‘American Son’ Starring Kerry Washington Is the Most Vacuous Kind of Race Play: REVIEW appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Broadway’s ‘American Son’ Starring Kerry Washington Is the Most Vacuous Kind of Race Play: REVIEW

Must-See LGBTQ TV: ‘Westside’ premieres on Netflix and new episode of ‘Hustle in Brooklyn’

www.glaad.org/blog/must-see-lgbtq-tv-westside-premieres-netflix-and-new-episode-hustle-brooklyn

This Drag Queen will steal your heart. And then completely destroy it.
The Kinsey Sicks have been at this a long time. The acapella singing group of gay men in drag are celebrating 25 years of performing shows that are equal parts camp comedy and very of-the-moment political humor.

www.queerty.com/drag-queen-will-steal-heart-completely-destroy-20181104?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+queerty2+%28Queerty%29

Yoga Studio Terrorist Scott Beierle Exposed as Misogynistic, Xenophobic, Racist, Homophobic Far-Right Extremist

Scott Beierle, who shot and killed two women at a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida on Friday, was a misogynistic, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, far-right extremist, it has been revealed.

Buzzfeed News reports: ‘On a YouTube channel in 2014, Beierle filmed several videos of himself offering extremely racist and misogynistic opinions, in which he called women “sluts” and “whores,” and lamented “the collective treachery” of girls he had went to high school with. “There are whores in — not only every city, not only every town, but every village,” he said, referring to women in interracial relationships, whom he said had betrayed “their blood.” …Another of Beierle’s 2014 videos was titled “The Rebirth of my Misogynism,” and featured him listing the names of women — from eighth grade until his time in the Army — whom he said caused his “rebirth.” …In the video, he said women were capable of “treachery” and “lying,” and also spoke aggressively about women giving him their phone number even when they had a boyfriend, and how angry it made him.’

Beirle appeared to be part of the “incel” community, that is “involuntarily celibate” males angry that they’re not getting it.

Beirle also wrote songs, some of which were titled “Who Let the Fags Out?” and “Bring Your Fatwa.”

Beierle’s political affiliations were unclear, though it appeared he had some disagreement with the Obama administration.

More at Buzzfeed News….

The post Yoga Studio Terrorist Scott Beierle Exposed as Misogynistic, Xenophobic, Racist, Homophobic Far-Right Extremist appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

Yoga Studio Terrorist Scott Beierle Exposed as Misogynistic, Xenophobic, Racist, Homophobic Far-Right Extremist

SNL’s Kate McKinnon Hilariously Takes on Laura Ingraham and the GOP’s Racist Fearmongering: WATCH

SNL headed into FOX News territory for its cold open. Kate McKinnon’s Laura Ingraham and Cecily Strong’s Jeanine Pirro warned viewers about the migrant caravan  and defended Trump against charges of racist fearmongering.

Said McKinnon’s Ingraham of Trump’s plans to defend the U.S. border: “Of course the liberal media’s trying to label President Trump a racist. But except for his words and actions throughout his life, how is he racist? All of a sudden the word ‘nationalist’ is bad, the word ‘white’ is bad, the phrase ‘white nationalist’ is bad! When I think of white nationalist I just think of a fun Fourth of July barbecue, the kind you don’t have to call the cops on.”

Strong’s Jeanine Pirro was then introduced and asked about the caravan:

“I haven’t just heard about it, I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” intoned Strong’s Pirro, playing footage of a Black Friday shopping stampede. “Take a look at this footage of the caravan from earlier today…It’s got Guatemalans, Mexicans, ISIS, the Menendez brothers, the 1990 Detroit Pistons, Thanos and several Babadooks.”

“No question,” there are Middle Eastern people too, Strong’s Pirro added. “This caravan’s got hella Aladdins. They took the very common direct flight from Iran to Guatemala, they claimed their elephants as service animals and then rode them straight into Mexico. It makes too much sense.”

Strong’s Pirro then showed more “footage” of  the caravan which was a clip from the zombie flick World War Z.

Ingraham then thanked her sponsors: warm ice cream, My Hemorrhoid Donut, and White Castle (“a castle for whites? yes, please”).

Ingraham then welcome former Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke, played by Kenan Thompson, who showed more “footage” of the caravan consisting of thousands of crabs skittering across a beach.

“My God, and those are humans?” asked McKinnon’s Ingraham.

“Basically, yeah,” responded Thompson’s Clarke. “We’ve basically learned that all the women in the caravan are more than nine months pregnant. And they’re holding the babies in until the exact moment they cross the border and then they’re literally gonna drop anchor. And get this. The babies are pregnant.”

McKinnon’s Ingraham then presented a new segment: “Fox News Tips for Black and Hispanic Voters.”

The tips? “Never Vote on Tuesdays…ballots can be confusing -if you see an R on the ballot that means ‘really a Democrat’ and the letter D means ‘dassa Republican, and tip three, you already voted. You might not remember, but you did.”

Watch:

The post SNL’s Kate McKinnon Hilariously Takes on Laura Ingraham and the GOP’s Racist Fearmongering: WATCH appeared first on Towleroad Gay News.

SNL’s Kate McKinnon Hilariously Takes on Laura Ingraham and the GOP’s Racist Fearmongering: WATCH