Third and Oak Hits the Corner Pocket

Third and Oak

Marsha Norman

directed by Naeemah A. White

at the Agassiz Theatre

February 17 and 18

In the recent Black CAST production of Third and Oak, two women in a laundry room late at night discover much more about each other than their mutual preference for fabric softener sheets.

Marsha Norman's play is an exercise in formal symmetry. In its first act, an older woman reluctantly talks to a younger one in a laundromat. They discover that they share a last name, Johnson, and then proceed to uncover each others' histories until their exploration is disturbed by the entrance of a man, a slick radio personality named Shooter (Derrick N. Ashong).

In the second act, we follow Shooter back to his space: a pool hall, where he and his surrogatte father, Willie (James L. Shelton), strike at the core of their own history until they are interrupted by the entrance of Deedee (Andrea N. Moore), the woman Shooter met earlier in the laundromat.

The play is about intersections and contrasts: male and female, old and young, history and future. It is an ambitiously tricky play for any cast, relying on chemistry and tension to hold it together through emotionally charged exchanges. Fortunately, this cast has most of the right stuff to pull it off.

The temperature immediately rises any time Ashong walks on stage. His Shooter is a deejay with a wandering eye, deeply conflicted by the shadow of his father, a legendary pool hustler who has committed suicide, and the specter of his wife, whose devotion to Shooter is rivalled only by her passion for shopping.

Ashong plays his part with real emotional depth, conveying the battle between his better instincts towards his family, his troubled history, and the easy path provided by his $60,000 job at the radio station. "When you are a personality," he tells Willie with veiled self-contempt, "You don't have to have a personality."

His symmetric counterpart is Deedee, a newlywed whose wandering eye is born of desperation and loneliness. She has escaped the sight of her cheating husband's empty pillow for the soothing rythym of the laundromat. Childlike Deedee's dreams extend only to having beer poured over her as she joins her husband in the winner's circle of a drag race.

Moore slathers a thick Southern accent on the empty chatter that fills up the life of a woman who can name all of Snow White's seven dwarfs, except Happy. Moore and Ashong's encounters sizzle, changing an innocent game of pool into the dangerous terrain it represents for both of them.

The balance to their sexual tension is provided by the stablizing influences of Bonnie James and James L. Shelton as Alberta and Willie. Though the two never meet, they share their wisdom, gained through years of experience, with the impulsive Deedee and Shooter. Each has a secret whose tension adds depth to the pure sexual energy of Norman's script, and brings each act to a dramtic conclusion.

Though James is a knowing, reflective Alberta, she is slightly over shadowed in the mentoring role by the authority of Shleton's Willie. His confrontations with Shooter, and his reminisciences of his past as one of the "Three Blind Mice" with Shooter's father provide the show with its most powerful moments, allowing Norman's script to truly soar.

One reason the production lacks more of these moments is its setting. Certainly a cast should be able to pull off a realistic play anywhere, but the orchestra pit of an ornate theater is perhaps not the best place to try.

In choosing to not use the stage proper, director Naeemah A. White brings her show closer to the audience, at the expense of some necessarily awkward staging and the distraction of the Agassiz Theatre's elaborate architecture. A better solution might have been to seat the audience onstage with the actors, as more intimate Agassiz shows have done in the past.

Otherwise, White has not misstepped, either in her choice of this stunning script, her direction of the actors through moments of high tension and comedy, or the silences that can be the most difficult moments of all to fill on a stage.

Third and Oak is a nest of treasures, touching on contemporary issues of relationships between men and women, history and future facing the African-American community, while maintaining the universal appeal that marks any truly great literature.

The Black CAST production captures some of the show's best moments, but often simply does not have the experience to pull off others. Although The Crimson saw the play during its final dress rehearsal, the show would benefit from further rehearsals and performances to truly seep the actors into their roles.

It is a shame that the show ran for only one weekend. Hopefully, Black CAST will maintain it in some form as a repertory show. It certainly merits the exploration and exposure that a future run would provide.