Review by Anthony Neri.es
Tambo & Bones has come to Chicago, presented by Refracted Theatre Co. at the Den Theatre. It’s dense and thought-provoking like a treatise with a burning thesis, written underground. The playful moments, indulgent as they are, can be torn off at any moment, puppets of a driving discernment.
Written by Dave Harris, and directed by Mikael Burke, the play grapples with the subject of “Race in America,” a phrase orotundly pronounced by Tambo (William Anthony Sebastian Rose II) and received by the audience not without a layer of historicallyi nformed irony. He is clad in 19th century striped pants and a tail-coat suit (Kotryna Hilko’s superb costume design). The backdrop is a cartoonish sketch of sunny hills, an ironic and inquisitive rehearsal of a minstrel show. He interacts with a cardboard tree, garnering laughs, and bemoans the realization of his fake world and fake personhood, a legacy imprinted in the three-fifths compromise in the US Constitution and discussed in one of many lectures by intellectual Tambo.
From the start, Bones (Patrick Newson Jr.) is more the optimistic achiever, skeptical of the studied cynic Tambo’s critical distance from the grubby money-making world. He struggles to pry quarters from the whites, eyeing the audience with quivering lips and telling a tale about his tragic son “Zippy,” as cardboard a son as the trees onstage. That doesn’t work. Maybe he can get them with the knife game, tapping the point in between his fingers. That doesn’t work either. He settles on thrusting it through his hand along with the chair it rests on, which clings to him kabob-like. It’s hilarious seeing these characters fumbling with such energy and whimsy. Both actors deftly stretch their body language to the capacious extremes of cartoon figures, the comic nature of their cardboard world pushed to the max when they abduct the playwright, a plush doll version, and demand answers about their conditions.
From then on, the genuine strife of Black Americans becomes a heavier load on Tambo’s mind, intermixing the cursory slapstick of the show thus far with a riotous protest of pain, which persistently rears its red face throughout the rest of the show.
It is quite jarring when the stage aggressively slides back and twists tersely before our eyes. Scenic designer Sydney Lynne expertly handles the versatility. The transition is suffused with sounds of a police chase, sweeping us into the modern world and promoting our dichotomous underdogs as blinged-out rap stars. Their continued disagreements are clear in their lyrics. Bones is not so much intending to change minds as to “be” a rapper. He enjoys making money. His music is assertive, embodied, and cool. Tambo infuses his songs with sociology. He rips through the injustice of his world with a lyrical razor.
The actors’ rapping abilities are highly praise-worthy here as are Harris’s lyrics. When the background sounds don’t drown it out, the words rhyme crisply and unexpectedly. A background screen shows music videos of them strutting alleyways and casting mean looks at the cameras. Intermittent clips of AI news anchors besmirching rap as inspiring violence interrupt throughout, adding yet another modality to a production packed with effects.
The final setting takes place in a dystopian future, including robots who execute a rather unnerving racial program. The seriousness of the play just never ceases even with the comical overlay. I’ll leave the results of this dystopia a mystery, but let’s say, despite costume changes, our characters retain some stubborn human vices.
The modal variety of the set is stunning but also a bit sloppy at times. While there is certainly an ordering idea behind the presentation of three distinct timespans—slavery, capitalism, and a dystopian future—the integration of the three can use some smoothing. Despite this, the ending concludes the overarching study of race in a way that expands the topic and unites all the various aspects of the play. While disorienting and too varied at times, Tambo & Bones is wonderfully acted, full of dazzling effects and costumes, and provides a compelling perspective on racial issues in America.
Tambo & Bones by Refracted Theatre Co. continues through November 11 in the Bookspan Theatre at the Den Theatre 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave. Performances are on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30pm and Sundays at 3pm. Tickets are $25.
Anthony Neri is a recent graduate of the University of Iowa. He enjoys watching plays and reading novels and currently works for a travel agency.
For more information on this and other plays, see theatreinchicago.com.
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