Jaclyn (Tonya Pinkins) and Ileen (Dianne Wiest) get involved in racism and office politics in RASHEEDA SPEAKING (photo by Monique Carboni)
The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 22, $77-$97
www.thenewgroup.org
www.signaturetheatre.org
The New Group’s twentieth anniversary season, and first at the sparkling Pershing Square Signature Center, continues with Joel Drake Johnson’s clever, if straightforward, pared-down examination of race and office politics, Rasheeda Speaking. The white Ileen (Dianne Wiest) and the black Jaclyn (Tonya Pinkins) work for the white Dr. Williams (Darren Goldstein), taking care of patients and handling the bills and forms. As the show opens, the surgeon is wheedling Ileen into reporting on Jaclyn, whom he clearly doesn’t like; he wants Ileen, whom he is promoting to office manager, to write down all of Jaclyn’s faults so he can ultimately replace her through human resources. “I don’t think she fits in,” Dr. Williams tells Ileen. “Her attitude is terrible. And she hates me.” After five days out sick, Jaclyn returns, complaining about toxins, the sorry state of her plants, and poisonous rays. She mistreats elderly white patient Rose Saunders (Patricia Conolly), accuses Ileen of being in love with their boss, doesn’t speak well of Mexicans, and claims Dr. Williams “doesn’t think white people should socialize with black people.” But just when it seems that Jaclyn is somewhat of a conspiracy theorist, both Dr. Williams and Ms. Saunders make comments that show that Jaclyn might not be that crazy after all.
Dr. Williams (Darren Goldstein) and Jaclyn (Tonya Pinkins) are not exactly the best of friends in New Group production (photo by Monique Carboni)
Played beautifully by Tony winner Pinkins (Jelly’s Last Jam; Caroline, or Change) and two-time Oscar winner Wiest (All My Sons, Bullets over Broadway), Jaclyn and Ileen are an engaging odd couple, bantering back and forth with aplomb, the former a ball of fire who speaks her mind, the latter a gentle soul who loves life and prefers to avoid confrontation. Pinkins commands the stage, stomping around Allen Moyer’s splendid doctor’s office set, while the rest of the cast treads far more lightly. Wiest might smile a lot as Ileen, but there’s something lurking right below the surface, and Goldstein (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, The Affair) is appealing as the pastry-munching, suspicious surgeon who lets others do his dirty work. First-time director Cynthia Nixon keeps it all moving fluidly despite the office furniture clutter, giving appropriate space for Chicago playwright Johnson’s (Four Places, The Fall to Earth) razor-sharp dialogue. The narrative is too often overly direct and explicit, but the hundred-minute play does reveal the latent racism that is still so prevalent in today’s supposedly postracial society, letting us know that each and every one of us has plenty of work to do.