No-one gets off the hook in Parks' play about slavery
Daniel Nelson
Father Comes Home From The Wars arrives at the Royal Court Theatre with great reviews in the US – and they are spot on.
Suzan-Lori Parks’ play is witty, intelligent, engrossing, inventive and boldly direct: as she told a post-performance Q&A, “Nobody gets off the hook in this play. We are all included.”
She’s spot on with that comment, too. Even – or specially – the hero, Hero, the Boss Master’s servant slave on a small southern US plantation at the outbreak of the civil war.
“He’s big, brave, smart, honest and strong”, says a member of the Chorus of Less Than Desirable Slaves (when I spotted that categorisation in the list of characters I knew we were in for a treat).
But he’s flawed, as he struggles with a series of moral dilemmas, including the conundrum that gets the play moving: should he follow the Boss Master into war in the Confederate army on the basis of the colonel’s promise of freedom. Parks is good at flaws, which is partly why the play is so engrossing.
In truth, she’s outstandingly good at theatre-writing in general. She is unafraid to sweep aside theatrical conventions, though a couple of times I felt that her penchant for direct address of the audience cut the legs from a dramatic confrontation.
There’s a strong didactic element, too, in terms of the cruelty and greed of slavery (of which many people remain ignorant), and of building empathy among a-historical audiences for some of the consequent behaviours of slaves and African-Americans.
And if you think that’s not necessary, remember Kathy Miller, the Donald Trump campaign chair in Ohio, who just days ago said that “It’s their own fault” if black people haven’t succeeded and that “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected.”
This terrific evening (three hours with interval) is three short plays, and will be followed by others that follow a family through the generations up until the present.
Brilliant.
* Father Comes Home From The Wars, parts 1, 2 and 3, is at the Royal Court, Sloane Square, until 22 October. Info: 7565 5000.
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