'Trouble in Mind,' Now at the LatinUs Theater Company, Explores How Prejudice Crushes Lives and Dreams

For some theatrical experiences, such as Hamilton, it’s good to prepare in advance by listening to the soundtrack while you read the lyrics. That way, once you’re in the theater, you can enjoy the composer’s creation more fully.

In a similar way, if you plan to see Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress, now being staged by Seat of the Pants Productions, you should first Google the eponymous blues song written by pianist Richard M. Jones. As performed by singer-to-the-gods Nina Simone (my favorite version), the song will infuse you with a visceral sense of how torment and hope can be combined in one startling artistic work. The lyrics whipsaw from the depths of depression (“I’m gonna lay my head/On the lonesome railroad line/Let the 2:19/Satisfy my mind”) to the heights of optimism (“I won’t be blue always/’Cause I know the sun’s gonna shine in my backdoor someday.”)

If the renowned Black playwright Childress borrowed her title from that 1925 song when her play opened in 1957, it was a perfect choice. In any case, the play she wrote uses humor and knowledge of how plays are rehearsed to explore how racial and gender prejudice, even among ostensibly sensible people, can crush lives and dreams. And the SOTP ensemble troupe gives her script a strong and vital airing, even with a couple wrinkles.

It takes place in a theater where rehearsals for a Broadway production of a bit of tripe called “Chaos in Belleville” is just getting started. As we watch the racially mixed cast work their way through the script, which deals with the lynching of a Black man, and their own 1950’s-era racial issues.

This lively group includes Wiletta (an excellent Nicole Sumlin) who has been around the theatrical block for a while and has the scars from white directors telling her how to “truthfully” enact her roles on stage, and from the required ass-kissing that is demanded of her. She shares her crusty knowledge with John (Madison Ledyard-King), a young Black actor who is dazzled to be in this Broadway cast and is all ears.

When Wiletta clashes with white director Al Manners (a smoothly enraging Tom Woodward) about her interpretation of her character, with him instructing her to do some trendy (at the time) acting exercises to help her “relate to” and “justify” her character’s words, she bristles. Wiletta actually wants to change the play-within-a-play’s ending, which is clearly beyond the bounds of any actor in any play.

This conflict is embellished by the other members of the cast including two Black actors—flashy Millie (Zyrece Montgomery) and wise old veteran actor Sheldon (Darryl Tatum)—along with a pair of white performers: ingenue Judy (Elizabeth Donner) and jaded soap opera star Bill (Andy Knode). The cast of TIM is filled out by Tom Stephan as Henry, another grizzled theater hand who has been demoted to doorman at the theater, and Eddie (Michael J. Montanus) who serves as Al’s gofer and kick-me-please assistant.

This is a play that asks questions and doesn’t provide answers. And the cast does a remarkable job of keeping those questions alive and intriguing under the supple direction of Jeannine Gaskin. However, a couple scenes suffer from some overly obvious staging, such as when Sheldon decides to reveal a dark moment from his past. When he walks to downstage center, with the other actors arrayed behind him, it feels like we’re getting our arm twisted to acknowledge an Important Moment.

Also, playwright Childress never manages to isolate the central conflict since she is attending to all the various perspectives of the numerous characters involved. One longs for a more extended face-off between self-satisfied director Al and rebel actor Wiletta, a confrontation where each are not trimming their sails because of the need to get on with the rehearsal.

But that may be just wishful dreaming from the perspective of more than 50 ensuing years, during which we have seen progress on racial issues, in theater and elsewhere, but not nearly enough.

As Nina Simone sings in “Trouble in Mind,” “When you see me laughin’, I’m just laughin’ to keep from cryin’.”

Trouble in Mind
Through November 19 produced by Seat of the Pants Productions at the LatinUs Theater Company, the Pivot Center, 2937 W. 25th St., www.seatofthepants.org.

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