THEATER REVIEW: The Whipping Man at Barrington Stage Company

Submitted by Chris Newbound on May 30, 2010 - 3:08pm
Theater

 

 

The Whipping Man
Stage 2, Pittsfield, Mass. ($15-$45)
 
By Chris Newbound
 
A Barrington Stage Company presentation of a play written by Matthew Lopez, directed by Christopher Innvar
 
John                                                 LeRoy McClain 
Simon                                              Clarke Peters
Caleb                                               Nick Westrate
 
 
With an intimate, intense, historical three-hander, as The Whipping Man by Matthew Lopez most certainly is, it’s important to keep it real, not only so as to transport us back to an entirely different time and place, but to keep us there and to keep us interested. And the Christopher Innvar-directed production does just that and more, never once slipping out of the specific world that playwright, director, actors, stage designers, and other production elements have all worked collaboratively to create and maintain throughout the two hours of this compelling, relatively new work from an exciting playwright now on display at BSC's Stage 2 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, through the middle of June.
 
All too often it proves to be the case that one weak or missing link can let the entire enterprise of such small productions down; its Achilles heel being the necessity of each actor having to hold up his end of things to make it all work. No such trouble here, as all three actors, deftly directed by Innvar, seem perfectly in sync and perfectly themselves, that is to say, completely inhabit the three very different men they are playing in John (LeRoy McClain), Simon (Clarke Peters), and Caleb (Nick Westrate).
 
Simon and John are the slaves still using the abandoned house of their former master as shelter in Richmond, Virginia, as the Civil War reaches its gruesome end. Caleb is the son who is returning after the last days of the war, a mere shell of his former self, his uniform in tatters, one of his legs so badly infected that Simon will soon have to amputate it in order to save his life. The play begins, in fact, with Caleb limping into the seemingly empty house much like Scarlet O’Hara returning to Tara back from burning Atlanta.
 
Soon enough, however, Caleb discovers two of his father’s slaves (now former slaves), John and Simon, also inhabiting the house. John, the younger, has his own, initially mysterious, reasons for hanging around that we’ll slowly learn more about as he tries to plot his next move now that the war is over and he is a free man, while Simon waits for his wife and daughter to return.
 
While this complex and subtle work deals with a myriad of issues, perhaps the overreaching one is freedom itself. How free can anyone be, if he is not free from his past, his addictions, his conscience, his ancestors, his father, or even himself?
 
The entire action of the play, such as it is, tries to answer this over the course of two days, with much of the story being the back story that fills in the world of the house before the war, when John and Caleb once were “two peas in a pod” playing and laughing as they grew up together. That is until Caleb’s father sent John off to see the whipping man, someone hired to whip the slaves, brutally, when it was thought "necessary."
 
With Caleb now defeated and bedridden following the amputation of his leg, and having abandoned his troops, and John now free, it is the former slave’s turn to give it to the master, if he so chooses, and it is the two men circling one another like growling dogs, as Simon tries to keep the peace, that provides much of the tension of their present circumstances.
 
Underlying all this is also the fact that Caleb and his family are Jewish, and therefore descendants of slaves themselves. Has this made the family more sympathetic and kinder slave owners than their other white counterparts, or has it only made their slave owning that much more indefensible given their history and heritage? Over the course of the play, this and many other complexities are slowly untangled as we learn just how intertwined these men’s lives truly are and how much their precarious futures now depend upon one another.
 
While some may quarrel with the very ending of the play and some of the preachiness that takes over parts of the second act, The Whipping Man still makes for riveting, powerful theater, and a wonderful start to not just the Barrington Stage season but the summer Berkshire theater season in general, a terrific and promising first offering that immediately sets the bar for all other productions to come. [May 30, 2010]
 
Sets, Sandra Godmark; costumes, Kristina Lucka; lighting,Scott Pinkney; sound, Brad Berridge; production stage manager, Kate J. Cudworth. Runs through June 13. Running time: 2 hours with one intermission.
 
[Photo of (left to right) Nick Westrate (Caleb) LeRoy McClain (John), and Clarke Peters (Simon) by Kevin Sprague]
 
 

 

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