Eleanor Burgess’ brilliant two hander, THE NICETIES, may have
used David Mamet’s OLEANNA structure (student confronts teacher/ professor gets
rattled/ says and does untoward things/ consequences ensue) but that’s where
the comparison ends. THE NICETIES isn’t about radical feminism. Racism and
history are at odds in the Huntington
The law of unintended consequences, however, has intervened
in my review because I saw Burgess’ extraordinary play mere hours after I
watched Dr. Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh testify before Congress on Sept. 27
(prior to Senator Flake’s successful maneuver for an F.B.I. investigation).
Words like prep school, bravery, hearings and death threats
jumped across the footlights at me, clanging like “The Anvil Chorus.” Suddenly,
Burgess’ play became an indictment of the current (hopeless, helpless) state of
our democracy, when, in fact, she sets her play in 2016 before the car wreck of
an alt-right government.
Burgess is concerned with the bias of history, especially
American history—written, as the
pundits say, by the victors. So why should we be surprised that there are few
accounts from African slaves or Native-Americans of what transpired? The young
African-American student whose paper is being skewered for both grammar and
content (by her elegant but pretentious white professor) makes the case that
she’s carrying around “real history” in her skin and bones. (Fats Waller made
the case seventy years ago about “what is on my face” in his searing “Black and
Blue.” Yet African-Americans today still find their lives endangered by the
color of their skin.)
Jordan Boatman’s Zoe is audacious and impetuous and her
professor (Lisa Banes, oozing a Seven Sisters superiority) doesn’t much like
her tone. She tries to tell the student she’s sympatico: “I get it,” she says.
And you know the response to that! The back and forth is exciting stuff. You
think the teacher has a point (about books being better than Google for
academic reference material), then you side with the student (about the
importance of demonstrations and marches over classes). It’s a marvelous debate
until it goes very wrong.
You’re even drawn into the argument at the center of their
academic disagreement: that revolutions don’t work. The professor maintains
that the repressive government which is violently overthrown makes way for yet
another repressive regime, citing Russia ,
Iran and Cuba America
Director Kimberly Senior gets a clever dramatic rhythm going
on stage for the two dynamic performers and Act I hurtles by. The second act
resolution, for me, is less satisfying than the set-up but whether we favor one
point of view over the other, Burgess manages to make both characters compelling
and sympathetic.
