Playwright Eugene Lee's East Texas Hot Links takes place in 1955 in the piney woods of East Texas. It was the year that Emmett Till was murdered and the Klan was feared. This is the story of the Top O' the Hill Cafe off the backroads run by Charlesetta Simpkins (AnJi White), and the men who visited daily to drink corn liquor, play the numbers, and tell tales. Lee's characters are multi-dimensional and I see them as archetypes more than the people every Black person had in their family "down South." White is luminous in the role of Charlesetta and brings a steeliness to the character. When she pulls the bat from under the counter the men back up because they know she will use it but she also takes off her apron to dance and get worked up to the blues playing on the jukebox.
East Texas Hot Links is one of those dusty pictures of Black men on a porch in the South come to life. Kelvin Roston Jr. is fantastic as Roy Moore, the Black high school basketball champion. He relives the glory days of blowing out the opposition and the girls calling his name. Roston Jr. is a chameleon who inhabits a role with every cell. He glowed as the beatified Oedipus in The Gospel at Colonus. He shines as the numbers runner who still has keys to the gym.
Alfred H. Wilson and Willie B. play Columbus Frye and Adolph respectively. Wilson plays the local property owner with houses for the "colored" people to rent. He carries the air of an elder statesman who dresses when he goes out even in the Texas heat. Adolph is the cafe griot who may have only had a half semester of college but has a doctorate in wisdom and truth. Willie B. is excellent as the blind man who sees better than anyone with regular sight. Lee's dialog rolls out of him at a perfect pace. He speaks of the Bible, philosophy, and the basest facts of life—that everyone is a predator and a victim on the food chain in life. He spars with XL Dancer played by Juwan Lockett. XL thinks that he is the smartest one and believes that the white folks building the new highway respect him because he gets to drive the boss's truck.
Lockett plays the arrogant XL with a bitter edge befitting the character. Adolph always cuts him down to size and talks above him. XL is the archetypal Judas falling into a Stepin Fetchit mode, but there may be sympathy for him because of how he earned his position in the good graces of the local Klan leader/businessman. Ceno Walker plays Buckshot, a man feared for his temper and remembered for a vicious act when someone got on his wrong side. A.C. Smith is the sinister-seeming Boochie Reed. Boochie is a gambler and a seer who can tell when good fortune or pain will happen to another person. Smith is imposing with a 10,000-mile stare that could freeze your blood. He sees a dark cloud over Delmus Green (David Dowd) who keeps popping in to make a mysterious phone call.
Ron OJ Parson has a firm handle on Black historical drama. He directed the searing story of the Red Summer of racial violence in Relentless for Timeline Theatre. Parson knows the beat of dialect and community dynamics of America's troubled relationship with the "colored" community. I particularly liked how the Boochie character had visions by reading a person's hand. Black people from the South still tell stories about karmic retribution and visions. My family has a trove of mysterious happenings and how to ward them off—e.g. always burn the hair left in your comb over brush and never eat the "conjure chicken" that scratches in the yard. The characters in East Texas Hot Links connect to the soil, picking cotton, having to eat the offal of the hogs, and living closer to the land. Boochee pierces the veil and the characters take heed of his visions in a bone-chilling way.
Jack Magaw's scenic design is inspired and spot on from my memories of Louisiana and Beaumont, Texas. The tin roof, battered white icebox (refrigerator), and old advertising posters tinged brown from tobacco and age. East Texas Hot Links tells a familiar story for people of a certain era. Still, the same issues remain in this millennial era of horrific racially motivated crimes done with impunity. Eugene Lee hits the nail on the head telling us how a day of trash-talking, drinking, and sexually charged banter can turn into terror.
Also, kudos on the music before and during the show itself. The mix of blues songs was visceral and gave an earthiness to the atmosphere. It set the aural stage for hearing the dialog authentically. I highly recommend East Texas Hot Links.
East Texas Hot Links runs through September 29 at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. For tickets and more information please visit CourtTheatre.org
For more information on this and other plays, see theatreinchicago.com.
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