South Florida’s only provider of exclusively African-American plays, the M Ensemble Theatre Company fills an important niche in South Florida’s culturally eclectic theatre scene. The number of productions the M Ensemble mounts each year are too few, but when they present something, it’s usually worth seeing.
The company recently celebrated its 40th year with its latest version of a much-produced favorite, Samm-Art Williams’ “Home,” a hit on Broadway in 1980. It was a short run, playing only through this past Sunday, which wasn’t long enough for me to get a review out in time for you to see it. But I’ll offer a few of my thoughts anyway.
“Home” is set, initially, in the small Bible town of Crossroads, North Carolina in the 1950s, where shiftless teenager Cephus Miles spends most of his days making mischief and spending time with his girlfriend, Pattie Mae Wells. His future seems destined to a life of hard labor, hog-stealing and fish fries. Eventually, Patti Mae leaves to pursue a career in a big city and Cephus is drafted to fight in Vietnam, both of which gradually change his perspective on life. He becomes a draft dodger, imprisoned for five years because the Bible tells him “Thou shalt not kill.”
After his incarceration, Cephus is lured by the beck and call of New York City’s glitzy nightlife, where he develops a drug habit, gallivants with loose women, finds and loses a job and winds up on welfare and panhandling to get by, ultimately realizing that home in North Carolina is really where he belongs.
As a staid morality tale, “Home” is so cliched it becomes laughable when it should be serious. The story’s theme is simplistically predictable, amounting to nothing more than “there’s no place like home,” and the phony, tacked-on happy ending trivializes the hardships Cephus had to endure to get there.
That being said, “Home” is a very funny play when it wants to be, and M Ensemble’s production is loving and authentic. I appreciated the minimalist, “Our Town”-like staging – this was the company’s first production in its new home at Wynwood’s Goldman Warehouse – and the spartan lighting design. Andre L Gainey was a convincing Cephus, and actress Carey Hart ran away with the show in a number of ancillary roles, from a preacher to a gold-digger to a welfare agent. Her performance was passionate and half-crazed, infusing the play’s sense of manic poetry with the perfect pitch and cadence.
“Home” is a play that has shown its age, but with its solid, heartfelt production, M Ensemble helped to minimize its wrinkles.
