Home Again

New York’s Signature Theatre Company continues its season-long tribute to the Negro Ensemble Company with another revival from the latter theater’s repertoire of excellent works. Samm-Art Williams’ Home, a Tony Award nominee for Best Play when it debuted on Broadway in 1980, is getting a new Off Broadway staging that is every bit as enjoyable as the original.

With a three-person cast that features Tracey Bonner, Kevin T. Carroll and January LaVoy collectively portraying more than 25 characters, this play is storytelling at its entertaining best.Home follows the life of Cephus Miles (Carroll) an amiable North Carolina farm boy who struggles to stay true to himself amidst a rapidly changing and turbulent America. The play spans a period from his adolescence in the 1950’s to his senior adulthood in the present, weaving in his experiences during the Vietnam War and Civil Rights era as he leaves behind his family’s farm to seek refuge and prosperity up North.

Williams uses a series of highly amusing and colorful vignettes to string together stories within the story. It is often like sitting at your granddaddy’s knee while he recounts some of the life lessons he picked up along the way. Hearing Cephus tell how he learned to “speak Indian” for example, is simply a brilliant piece of writing.

Director Ron OJ Parson maintains a lively pace throughout and makes skillful use of his cast. Bonner and LaVoy in particular carry not only the load of transforming themselves into multiple characters but provide music and sound effects as well at times.

Cephus’s journey takes him from found love to lost love, jail for draft evasion, a downward spiral into drugs and depression and final redemption. Right before our eyes, Carroll evolves from an innocent youth to a jilted lover, from confused victim of the system to a beaten down survivor.

Home parallels the northern migration experiences of countless African Americans who throughout the early part of the last century left the South in search of something better, only to be disappointed. But it should also have broader appeal to anyone wondering where they truly belong and what it takes to find happiness.

The play opens officially Dec. 7 and is scheduled to run through Jan. 4, 2009.