Power play

Sexual politics are at the core of Only in America

by Bill Rodriguez

ONLY IN AMERICA, by Aishah Rahman. Directed by Mark Lerman. With Nehassaiu deGannes, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Marilyn Dubois, and Semenya McCord. At Perishable

Theatre through November 23.

If Anita Hill still dreams about the Clarence Thomas horror show of six years ago, let's wish her one as redemptive as Aishah Rahman's Only In America. The surreal and poetic riff on that appalling episode is a powerful affirmation of women's defiant spirit in the face of our sniggering culture at large. Its world premiere at Perishable Theatre is a worthy, if belated, debut.

For three decades the oppression of women has been such an overworked subject that even the devoutly converted can wince at a sermon. Strident essays from the '60s can seem naïve and obvious. Well-intentioned observations can sound like banal platitudes. But Rahman has adopted a writing style wonderfully fit for making the familiar fresh. With a comical exuberance as unfettered as commedia dell-arte and a language style as evocative and compact as poetry, she has distilled the essence of an episode that enraged us so.

The victim is Cassandra Jackson (Nehassaiu deGannes), a young woman who can only speak in gibberish. She is a Capitol Hill secretary for a bureaucratic executive named Oral (Ricardo Pitts-Wiley), head of a department known as the Animal Bureau of Civil Rights. Jeremy Woodward's marvelous set design establishes the office scene with connotative precision. There are burgundy leather chairs and a silver coffee service. The bureau name is engraved in faux black marble along the top of a wall as golden as the window panes that look out from Oral's catbird seat. The wall stage right is covered with stuffed trophies, from ducks in flight to a sinister crow or raven ("Nevermore"?). There is even the pheasant he mentions when tempting Cassandra with a description of the opulent banquets she can indulge in if she learns to take his sexual advances in stride.

The first woman we see helping Cassandra is Lilli (Marilyn Dubois), as in lily-white, billed in the program as "a fair warrior," blond and just. (The other characters are black.) She is a masseuse and is trying to get Cassandra to speak by first relaxing her body. (Lilli lugs along more symbolic freight than one character can bear -- being a musician and a seer as well -- but little is belabored.)

The other helpmate is Act II's Scatwoman (Semenya McCord). She is literally and figuratively a cleaning lady. Dressed in white and carrying a white mop and bucket, she is at once the ignored black woman scrubbing in the background and also a purifier. But instead of swabbing the floor, she sprinkles the floor with sand in ritualistic fashion ("Catch dirt with dirt," she says). She warbles soothing, jazzy scat syllables that communicate peace and joy while sounding, literally, as nonsensical as Cassandra's inarticulate babblings.

Being articulate is the font of Oral's power and madness. Out of his mouth pours glib, rational justifications for all he does, as he gets off on fantasizing to her erotically and elaborately. He demeans his cringing subordinate millimeters from her face, all the while stressing that she can't say he ever touched her. To amusing effect, under Mark Lerman's direction, at one point when he's leaning against a wall he seeks sympathy from a snarling boars head he turns to. Pitts-Wiley has a couple of especially powerful scenes, The first is Oral's extended verbal sexual assault on Cassandra -- practically levitating in priapic transport. The second is a culminating word torrent, where Oral is gushing over the power of being articulate, and where the actor exceeds even his earlier delightful excess in his now verbal ejaculation.

But the heart and soul of this production is deGannes. Frail, beautiful, vulnerable, powerful -- I can't imagine a more effective Cassandra. Uttering nonsense syllables interspersed with recognizable English and French words ("Allatime lawdamercy c'est bon"), she maintains a tension between hope to communicate and fear of never being able to. The tension is relieved magnificently near the end, in an expected and obligatory empowerment scene that nevertheless rings true to the character and the play. Here deGannes breaks out of Cassandra's protective chrysalis and soars indeed. It's quite a moment, and because it's earned, it isn't mawkish.

Only In America has some tediously paced stretches (yes, Oral, get on with your litany already). And some moments fail to connect with the intended emotion (we have to be told that Scatwoman has attained an epiphany, instead of recognizing this on our own). But all in all, if the Clarence Thomas hearings had been a tenth as illuminating, we'd all be glowing still.

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Interview with Aishah Rahman

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