by Linda Chin Workman
‘The Niceties’ – Written by Eleanor Burgess; Directed by Kimberly Senior; Scenic Design, Cameron Anderson; Costume Design, Kara Harmon; Lighting Design, D.M. Wood; Original Music & Sound Design, Elisheba Ittoop; Fight Consultant, Angie Jepson. Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston through October 6
Days after seeing The Niceties, the opening production of Huntington Theater’s 2018-19 season, my head is still spinning. Brookline-born playwright Eleanor Burgess has crafted an intense, intellectual tennis match between two brilliant, liberal female scholars – Zoe, a black student (Jordan Boatman) and Janine, a white historian (Lisa Banes) – at an elite college. They meet during office hours to discuss Zoe’s history paper on the role of slavery in the American Revolution. Over the course of two acts and two hours, the pair volley dialogue across the stage at a rapid-fire pace. The niceties they start off with deteriorate into not-very-nice words and pressure tactics. Janine and Zoe initially get entangled in a series of smaller struggles about missing commas and primary sources before engaging the audience in larger questions about who is entitled to write and teach history.
The actors deliver polished, nuanced, and overall believable performances, and reveal to the audience (but unfortunately not to each other) the turmoil and gentleness underneath their tough exteriors. It is thrilling for a young female actor of color to have such a meaty role, and to see Boatman (a recent graduate of the UNC School of the Arts) more than hold her own with a very experienced scene partner in Bates. The action all takes place in Janine’s attic office (a space as stifling and lofty as the professor’s pretensions), thoughtfully designed by Cameron Anderson. Kimberly Senior’s direction is even-handed, and does not steer the audience’s sympathy towards one character versus another. Overall the storytelling was clear, but there were some confusing choices: why was a metal folding chair replaced with a fancy mid-century chair, but never sat in; why wasn’t the picture of Nelson Mandela ever referenced; why was Zoe’s privileged Westchester County upbringing only mentioned in passing, then glossed over?
Yale and NYU-educated, Burgess has already amassed an impressive resume and is well on the path to being a major voice in contemporary American theater. The Niceties is reminiscent in structure and style of David Mamet’s Oleanna, a two-character play about a male professor accused by his female student of sexual harassment that opened a generation ago (1994). Burgess is ambitious in choosing to tackle the highly charged and polarizing issues of racism, freedom of speech, identity politics, power and privilege, and she handles them with facility and care. Mamet wrote Oleanna when he was in his forties, making Burgess’ success in capturing the vernacular of people many years her senior and writing about controversial issues even more impressive.
Although this theme didn’t play front and center, I tuned into how much the story spoke to the generational divide. Zoe carries baggage towards the older generation and authority figures, including the founding fathers, and institutions of higher learning whose policies and climate perpetuate systemic racism and whose faculty (especially faculty with tenure or on tenure track) are more homogeneous than diverse. Zoe shows her irritation when Janine and her father share the same opinion about which of three alternative paths she should pursue. Zoe and Janine also demonstrate how millennials and baby boomers differ in how they fight for what they believe in and use technology and social media. I remain surprised about the choice to stage one scene with Zoe casually standing behind her professor’s desk. I thought violating a person’s private space was an unwritten rule common to all generations.
Brava to the Huntington for bringing The Niceties to Boston and inviting the audience to stay after select performances for a community conversation. The dialogue is so dense and the play so engaging (and enraging) that many welcome the opportunity to expand on the thoughts exploding in your head with people other than the one(s) you came to the theater with. For tickets and information, go to: https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/
