Rasheeda Speaking: Theater review by Adam Feldman
Something unspeakable is in the air at the doctor’s reception area where Jaclyn (Tonya Pinkins) and Ileen (Dianne Wiest) share adjoining desks. An African-American woman with complicated hair and a curt manner with patients, Jaclyn has been feeling sick, and blames it on “noxious, toxic stimuli” in the office; the sweet, slightly scattered Ileen, who is white and has worked at the office much longer, doesn’t sense anything amiss. But the racially charged atmosphere thickens fast in Joel Drake Johnson’s Rasheeda Speaking, an acidic depiction of race, power and friendship. When Dr. Williams (Darren Goldstein) promotes Ileen and asks her to spy on her supposed friend (he is looking for evidence to fire her), Jaclyn moves into aggressive defense to keep her job by any means necessary, including full-bore mind games. She has known the soul-leaching drudgery of the copy room, and she is never going back.
Blending darkly awkward workplace comedy with intense racial tension, Johnson's office-politics thriller is not afraid to push buttons hard. If the writing is sometimes single-minded, the leading actors balance it—and each other—with transfixing complication. Directed by first-timer Cynthia Nixon for the New Group, Wiest brings innumerable layers of translucence to her dithery character; her Ileen seems made of phyllo. And the fearlessly uncompromising Pinkins, in a companion performance to her triumph in Caroline, or Change, makes Jaclyn implacable in her opacity and determination to outplay a world that would otherwise determine her. Though the doctor insists that it not be framed as such, it is clear to everyone that Jaclyn is playing the race card. The real question is: Who dealt it to her?—Adam Feldman
New Group (see Off Broadway). By Joel Drake Johnson. Directed by Cynthia Nixon. With Tonya Pinkins, Dianne Wiest. Running time: 1hr 40mins. No intermission.
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