TheaterWorks has added American Sign Language interpretation to its latest online show, James Anthony Tyler's “Talkin’ to This Chick Sippin’ Magic Potion," and will offer the service for at least two other upcoming shows this season.
★★★★☆At first, anyway, father and son are shouting at each other across a chasm. As its title suggests, James Anthony Tyler’s two-hander previously staged off-Broadway is a play about race. Yet
Last modified on Fri 5 Mar 2021 04.28 EST
An ageing father has just moved into his sonâs apartment. We meet them at breakfast â the capable son cooks, the ailing father crabs at him and their tone hovers between light and dark as they bicker, sing and reminisce.
Donald (Charlie Robinson), 82 and too ill to live on his own, is a former taxi driver from Mississippi. Calvin (Wendell Pierce) has done better for himself, working as a university professor and living in a Harlem penthouse. The son does not want his father to put his gaudy Afghan throw in his stylish sitting room; the father calls him a snob and reminds him of the ignominies of his boyhood.
Some Old Black Man.
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This weekend, you can see actor Wendell Pierce star in a new production that is streaming for free online. The thing I love about the play is: not often do you see Black men just love each other and work through the difficulties of that love, Pierce says.
The play, by James Anthony Tyler, is called
Some Old Black Man. Pierce plays a college professor who moves his elderly father into his New York City apartment. His father, played by Charlie Robinson, was a taxi driver in Mississippi. It s the classic confrontation of father and son, says Pierce.