Border wars – Chicago Reader

Suzan-Lori Parks knows how to interweave domestic conflicts within the larger framework of our national madnesses and obsessions, of which white supremacy and its violent effects (external and internal) on non-white people is the most obvious and toxic. In the Pulitzer Prize–winning Topdog/Underdog, two Black brothers, Lincoln and Booth, excavate their shared past against the backdrop of racism and poverty. (Lincoln, the sole provider for the duo, works as a whiteface Abraham Lincoln in a shooting arcade; in The America Play, Parks also invented a Black character who works as a gravedigger and a Lincoln impersonator.) In Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3, she used Greek tragedy as the framework for the story of a former enslaved man, Hero (also called Ulysses) who marched off to the Civil War—on the Confederate side—while exploring war’s lingering effects on soldiers and civilians.

The Book of Grace
Through 5/18: Tue–Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Wed 5/7 2 PM; no shows Tue–Wed 4/8-4/9 and 4/22-4/23, Wed 4/9 7:30 PM, Wed 5/7 7:30 PM, Sat 5/10 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 5/11 3 PM, or Tue 5/13; audio description and touch tour Sun 5/4 3 PM (touch tour 1:30 PM), open captions Sat 5/3 3 PM and Thu 5/8, ASL interpretation Fri 5/16; Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $20-$102

The Book of Grace, first produced in 2010 and now in a revised version at Steppenwolf under the direction of Steve H. Broadnax III, takes us into the xenophobia, toxic masculinity, and desire for dominance at all costs in our current national malaise. Set at the southern border, the title refers to Grace (Zainab Jah), a wife and waitress who scribbles her thoughts and stories into a notebook. Grace’s husband, Vet (Brian Marable), is a border officer so obsessed with his job that their television is perpetually set to a livestream of the border fence, which he calls “a modern miracle.” He’s about to receive a medal for intercepting a truck filled with what we’re told were bad guys.

When Vet’s son from his first marriage, Buddy (Namir Smallwood), shows up after a 15-year separation, it’s obvious there is a lot of unresolved anger and disappointment. “Grace says I’m a work in progress,” Vet tells his son, to which Buddy responds, “I say you’re a piece of work”—emblematic of the sharp ripostes and wordplay that Parks specializes in. Still, the optimistic and peacemaking Grace seems poised to help both men reach a rapprochement. She even refers to their living room as “Camp David.”

But the damage between father and son, the fence of grievances built from years of disappointment and resentment, remains insurmountable. Smallwood—who played a vet with mental illness in Tracy Letts’s Bug at Steppenwolf and an orphaned introvert in Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust at the Goodman—has staked out his place as one of our finest portrayers of unsettled souls, and his performance as Buddy is a potent mix of rage, yearning, self-doubt, and vengeance. (He’s returning to Steppenwolf next season in a revival of Topdog/Underdog.) Marable’s Vet is fearsome in his own fearfulness. Like so many men in the U.S., he’s scared of losing his hard-fought place in the hierarchy and is determined to hang onto whatever power and control he can, within and outside his home.

Which means that Grace, like so many people trying to do good and find their voices in a world that tries to shut them down and bury them, is left to try to mend the rifts. Jah’s performance is revelatory, even though we don’t get much of a backstory for Grace’s own life before she married Vet. We see her reading from her book, the titles projected on three screens that also variously resemble battered fences and tattered billboards around the in-the-round set by Arnel Sancianco. She reimagines stories she hears at the diner to create happier endings, and we hope that grace can prevail over anger and paranoia. Parks’s deliberately obscure ending leaves us wondering about that possibility (especially now). But without a doubt, Broadnax’s cast leaves everything on the stage with unforgettable and sometimes heartbreaking clarity.