For a long middle stretch in Chika Ike’s production of Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea, Nathan Alan Davis’s play becomes a tense tug-of-war. But the opposing forces are not two different characters—well, they sort of are—but different genres.
Are we watching a magical realist play about a young black man from Baltimore who, despite just barely learning how to swim, is going to quite literally sail out into the ocean and find his ancestor who drowned while shipped over as a slave? Or are we watching a realist drama about an 18-year-old from a family with a history of mental illness who is now showing signs of the same?
It isn’t hard to guess which force wins out, but while it lasts that tension is what truly draws this production taut and makes it hum. It creates something you rarely see onstage, two equally opposing and equally sympathetic forces: on the one hand the young man trying to grasp the weight of his heritage, and on the other a mother who’s scared that weight, and the demons that come with it, will drag him to his death.
These are heights, alas, the rest of the production cannot quite reach. From its opening scene, wherein the Johns Hopkins–bound Dontrell (Jalen Gilbert) addresses “future generations” through his handheld tape recorder, telling them about the ancestor he’s seen in his dream, the poetry of Davis’s script is not quite matched by Ike’s staging. As Dontrell moves throughout his daily routine, driving with his friend Robby (Jerome Beck), collecting a scuba suit from his cousin Shea (Brianna Buckley) and even falling in love with Erika (Kayla Raelle Holder), the lifeguard who saves him from drowning, the fine acting from the ensemble is undercut by the lack of setting.
The lushness of Davis’s language and his imagery calls for a staging to match, but this production delivers the kind of bare-bones, “Chicago style” minimalism that this city has, indeed, worn down to the bone and then some. The alley staging means painted black floors and the occasional piece of furniture wheeled in and out. The walls are covered with chalked symbols, and the audience is kind of encased by painted foam shapes that sort of evoke the belly of a ship. It’s none of it enough.
In fact, the most vivid visual on the stage is the cake that’s served for the impromptu “second graduation party” that Dontrell’s mother (Shariba Rivers) throws him in order to throw him off his quest. It’s an actual cake, and certain audience members in the front rows could almost reach out and grab a slice. Its very realness—they actually cut the cake and eat it!—is startling in contrast to the blankness surrounding it.
And while Ike’s staging of the actors mostly suffers from this less-is-more approach, the performances themselves are good. As Dontrell, Gilbert brings the burden of having a whiz kid mind to bear on the character. Dontrell is a man who thinks too much and feels too much, which is why his mother fears for him. Rivers is great as well, presenting Dontrell’s mom as fighting an unending battle between steely perseverance, compassion and encroaching despair.
Buckley and Beck both give standout supporting performances, especially when given the chance to be funny. And the scene in which Dontrell and Erika fall for each other, while playing with flashlights in her beach home, is full-to-bursting with genuine romance. That kind of chemistry is rare—when two actors can just set a room on fire with nothing but the sparks between them.
In those moments, Gilbert and Holder lift Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea and carry it on their backs, a favor that this production too often fails to return.
First Floor Theater at the Den Theatre. By Nathan Alan Davis. Directed by Chika Ike. With Jerome Beck, Brianna Buckley, Jalen Gilbert, Kayla Raelle Holder, Brian Nelson Jr., Shariba Rivers, Destiny Strothers. Running time: 1hr 25mins; no intermission.