Lots of Déjà Vu in "Hambone"

By Kenneth Carroll
SeeingBlack.com Roving Critic

The Studio Theater in Washington, D.C. spares no expense in reminding audiences that Javon Johnson, author of Hambone, is an August Wilson protégé. You get the feeling very early in the play that you are a tourist in Times Square and some hustler is trying to convince you that the $50 watch he's selling is "just like" a Rolodex.

Instead of a restaurant in Pittsburgh, Hambone opens up in a sandwich diner in Johnson's home, Anderson, S.C. Here, all the all the usual August Wilson characters appear, speaking in African American vernacular and reveling in down home philosophy and folk wit. We have Bishop, the fretful, middle-aged owner of the diner. Henry, the slightly nutty friend and diner patron emerges as the idiot seer, prone to ramblings about Black oppression White conspiracies, and voodoo. And we have Bobbilee and Tyrone, angry young Black men struggling to find their way in a racist society. We also have secrets, a boatload of them, which form the fragile backbone of this play.

Hambone opens in 1988 in South Carolina with 19-year-old Tyrone, played effectively by Jamahl Marsh, struggling to break from the small town and from the protective talons of his foster dad Bishop, played by Doug Brown, (a Helen Hayes nominee for his acting in Wilson's Ma Rainey Black Bottom.) Tyrone is best friends with Bobbilee, a troublemaker, James Brown devotee and jailbird. Bobbilee, played with kinetic fervor by Luis A. Laporte, Jr., meets the Godfather of Soul while locked up and leaves jail determined to write a song for him. Bobbilee believes the song will result in a touring gig with Brown and signal his emergence as a man. Meanwhile, Tyrone has decided that the way to escape working in the diner his whole life is to rename himself Timothy Snyder so White employers won't know he's Black. Of course he hasn't quite thought through what he's going to do when he shows up for work obviously Black and with an I.D. that says Tyrone Jackson. If this were a comedy then the absurd goals of these two young men would be explainable.

Henry, played with intentional comic relief by David Toney, believes White people are devils who are using jails to catalogue Black men so they can steal their internal organs. Henry refuses care for a leg injury, instead opting to see Miss Francis, a voodoo woman. Besides his comic relief, which Toney plays just a few merciful steps above buffoonery, Henry's real value to Hambone is the fact that he shares Bishop's secret about Tyrone. The entire audience knows about this secret early in the first act and can't decide why it's such a big deal.

In a wasted appearance is the superb actor Timothy Rice as Harrison, the mysterious White railroad man who saunters in and out of meaningless scenes like a ghost. Rice, (who was wonderful as Sturdeyvant in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom), can't resuscitate his lethargic and flat character. Harrison's only purpose, it seems, is to provide a less-than-believable plot twist followed-up by unbelievable dialogue. Regge Life tries to pick up the dragging plot and pace in the second act, but the scenes plod even with action because little of what's being delivered seems plausible.

What makes Hambone a highly flawed play by a young playwright is the evidence here that Johnson lacks Wilson's meticulous attention to detail about the politics and culture affecting African Americans. We are left to wonder why in 1988 the doomed Bobbilee would be obsessed with James Brown, who by that time was way past his prime and addicted to PCP. In addition, the ubiquitous J.B. music played throughout the production is from Brown's glory years, rather than from the 1980s. And the characters in Hambone obsess about race and opportunity as if its 1938.

When Tyrone and Bobbilee anguish about getting out of Anderson and pursuing their admittedly kooky dreams, we are left to wonder, "what's stopping you?" Instead of insight about the how the Reagan-Bush years and the emergence of a hip hop aesthetic affect this small Black town, Hambone gives us an August Wilson retread with anachronistic sensibilities that waste the considerable talents of its ensemble.

It is no shame to emulate great writers like Wilson who cast such a broad shadow with their talent. But it is a shame for a new, talented writer to wallow in that shadow rather than tell his own story in his own way.

Hambone, written by Javon Johnson, directed by Regge Life, setting by Debra Booth Cast: Bishop, Doug Brown; Henry, David Toney; Tyrone, Jamahl Marsh; Bobbilee, Luis A. Laporte, Jr; Harrison, Timothy Rice. At the Studio Theater in Washington, D.C. until February 24, 2002. 202-332-3300. www.studiotheater.org

-- January 28, 2002

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