There is no worse enemy than a former friend. A friend knows your weak spots and intuitively senses how to manipulate those vulnerabilities to torture you. This dynamic underlies Karamu’s current world-premiere run of Before I Die: The War Against Tupac Shakur.
The lethal friendship in question is between Tupac Shakur and
Christopher Wallace a.k.a. Biggie Smalls or the Notorious B.I.G., the
two kings of hip-hop in the mid-1990s. At one time an opening act for
Tupac, Smalls had evolved into the iconic East Coast MC, at war with
the dominant West Coast rap embodied by Shakur.
Written by Karamu playwright in residence Michael Oatman, Before
I Die does a lot of self-conscious throat-clearing in the first
half of its 90 minutes. But once Tupac and Biggie meet face to face,
the humor, tragedy and absurdity of their conflict sends showers of
sparks all over the stage.
Set in a sterile Las Vegas hotel penthouse two days before his
drive-by assassination, Shakur seems like a caged panther prowling his
pristine but confining lair. Accompanied in his bedroom by Charlene, a
svelte but no-nonsense lawyer who is in town for a convention, Shakur
is obsessed with arranging a meeting with Smalls so they can tamp down
their bicoastal blood feud.
Oatman’s script does a nice job of establishing Shakur as a rap star
who is beset by a fierce and restless intelligence (he devoured books
like they were the hottest drug on the market). From railing about the
fact that hip-hop didn’t create misogyny to crafting a pun about “a Pac
on all their houses,” we see how this songwriter’s mind works in subtle
and interesting ways.
But early on, the structure of the play feels awkward. Shakur
sometimes addresses the audience directly and then engages in dialogue
with Charlene and his promoter Marion “Suge” Knight. This format might
work if there was less obvious self-analysis and forced introspection.
In one of Shakur’s first speeches to the audience, he whines, “You give
and give,” sounding more like a guilt-spewing Jewish mother than a
rogue rapper.
As Shakur, Jerome Anderson has the look and attitude firmly in
place, and he negotiates these loose opening scenes as smoothly as
possible. He is helped immensely by a quietly fierce Jeannine Oliver as
Charlene and smoldering Steve Acy as Knight.
However, it is all prelude to the entrance of Biggie Smalls, played
to hilarious and ominously dangerous perfection by Mike Brown. Speaking
quietly in a slightly congested twang, Brown turns Smalls into a force
that can easily match the random intelligence of Anderson’s Shakur.
Here, Oatman and director Hassan Rogers hit their stride. Smalls
casually squelches Shakur’s rants before they even start, claiming with
some accuracy that Shakur has too much going on in his brain, including
conspiracy theories. At one point, Smalls says, “You’re the only nigga
I know who can start a rumor and 20 minutes later be convinced by
it.”
This extended interchange is so fine, it makes one long for a
different first half, in which we could have learned more about each of
these compelling individuals — not to mention their controversial
and often socially significant music.
This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2009.
