It is such an easy sport to rail against cultural gatekeepers – whether they be in the field of arts, politics, or in the case of US playwright Joshua Harmon’s Admissions, education – because it absolves us of the uncomfortable realisation that we might be the ones with our hands on the latch. For Sherri Rosen-Mason (Kat Stewart), head of admissions at an exclusive high school and therefore directly responsible for the cultural makeup of the student body, the role of gatekeeper is a conscious one, a chance to undo some of the racial injustice that has blighted non-white lives for centuries.
Harmon opens the play in her office, where she is battling with fellow faculty member Roberta (Deidre Rubenstein) over the school’s prospectus. Sherri is unhappy with the paucity of photos of Black and Latina students in the glossy brochure, especially given how hard she has worked to increase their percentage at the school from a meagre six to the almost 20 she is just about to achieve. She wants the brochure to “reflect the world we live in”, even if it means fudging things a little. Roberta is bemused by Sherri’s fervour, even while she accedes to the editorial demands.
Much vital information is parsed in this first scene: we learn that Sherri is married to the school’s principal, Bill (Simon Maiden); we learn that her teenage son Charlie (William McKenna) is graduating and in the process of applying for Yale; we learn that Charlie’s best friend Perry, bi-racial, is also trying to get into the Ivy League colleges. And, importantly, we learn that Sherri’s interest in racial equality is a genuine one, founded in righteousness and good old liberal decency. In this matter, Sherri tells Roberta, “I am right.”
The audience nods along, quite sure that she is. The following scene takes place in Sherri’s impeccably middle-class kitchen as she and Perry’s mother, Ginnie (Heidi Arena), await the news about their sons’ college applications. Harmon has enormous fun here skewering the pretensions and vaulting ambition behind aspirational paedagogy, the reflected glory parents bathe in when their kids have educational success. Naturally, Perry gets into Yale and Charlie does not.
The play’s central conceit flares into life when Charlie gets home and lets fly with a ten-minute monologue of invective and self-pity, positioning himself as a victim of his whiteness. It folds in questions of competing racial identities, colonisation, even Holocaust survival guilt, in a dazzling display of wit and provocation. McKenna is so fine here – his teenage exasperation whipping into a persecution complex so massive it resembles a black hole, sucking in his self-awareness, perspective and rationality – the other actors have to scramble to keep up. His parents are aghast, horrified he might be the one unacceptable thing in their household: a Republican. Actually, he is just reflecting an entire society’s anxiety around questions of repatriation and restitution. If we are going to give more people a seat at the table, Charlie asks, why does it have to be my seat?
Harmon’s most provocative move, in a deliberate inversion of the political representation mantra “Nothing about us without us”, is to people his play about racial equality solely with white characters. Perry, and his Black father, Don, are kept offstage; it is left to white mum Ginnie to defend and advocate on their behalf. The whole play is full of white people agitating, fidgeting and worrying around the fringes of injustice, to an audience (this is MTC, after all) of largely white people. We are all the gatekeepers in this scenario, whether we like it or not.
Director Gary Abrahams wrangles his brilliant cast with complete assurance, keeping the pacing crisp and the mood buoyant even when the weight of the play’s concerns threatens to derail the sense of fun. This affability is key to Harmon’s point, that these issues rarely threaten our privilege, even while we talk about checking, acknowledging and even “owning” it. What, the playwright asks, are we actually willing to do about it?
Stewart is typically sharp, funny and convivial as a woman coming to the realisation that her maternal instincts might be nibbling away at her ethical certitude, and she is superbly matched by Maiden as the outwardly tolerant husband secretly burning with class hatred, and especially McKenna as the gloriously wayward teenager clutching at ideologies he barely understands. Arena initially seems overdone as the bubbly Ginnie, but she soon reveals levels of grit and bitterness behind the sunny mask. And Rubenstein is magnificent as the sanguine Roberta, an unmovable presence with untapped reserves of clarity and compassion.
Admissions might be viewed as another example of white people crowding out Black voices, that Harmon’s play hypocritically reinforces racial privilege even while it purports to undermine it. It’s certainly a legitimate viewpoint. But there is something relieving about seeing theatre tackle its own shortcomings around race, holding up the mirror to its own audience, and showing “the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”. In this world of personal branding, where discussion of white privilege sinks so often from advocacy to advertorial, it is bracing to hear the call for change clanging around our ears like a playground bell. School’s in, white people, and the lesson has already started.
