The August Wilson Theater is electric before “Pass Over,” the play by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu that opened Sunday night on Broadway.
Such high humor is unusual for a non-musical drama. But there’s a lot of novelty to what you’d get ahead of your average production of “Waiting for Godot,” on which this work is based in part.
The atmosphere of the party is due to the fact that “Pass Over” is the first play to open on Broadway since the New York cinemas closed in March 2020. For those of us who have missed Broadway, it feels amazing to be back, even after presenting a vaccination card, a photo ID and a ticket before walking through a metal detector.
85 minutes, without interruption. August Wilson Theater, 245 W. 52nd St .; 888-985-9421.
For a while, going to a Broadway show will be like going to Dubrovnik.
Was the flight worth it? Above all. “Pass Over” is a compelling, albeit flawed, way to start things off in Times Square. Nwandu’s central presumption is perfect: take the format of Samuel Beckett’s classic “Waiting for Godot” and swap his duo Didi and Gogo trapped in the spot – “Let’s go”. “We can not”. – for two black men on a generic street corner. More modern than Sam’s vagabonds, but just as motionless. The iconic tree is now a lantern; grass and dirt are cement and asphalt.
Our two boys are Moses (Jon Michael Hill) and Kitch (Namir Smallwood), and their lives consist of small talks and discussing how and when they will leave. They like to list their “promised top 10 on earth” in Nwandu’s often hilarious muscular poetry.
“Collard greens and combs … brown bunnies … my bright red superman star … full drawer, eh clean socks,” Moses says.
“Okay, look, he has a good one now,” Kitch replies. (These are the spellings of Nwandu’s dialogue.)
Some people might feel offended by some of the conversations (the word N is used a lot), but the writer uses our annoyances to provoke a debate about language ownership.
The duo’s endless routine is interrupted by the arrival of Mister (Gabriel Ebert), a smiling southern dandy with a picnic basket full of food (like Mary Poppins’ magic bag) and a penchant for making fake racists and Ossifer ( also played by Ebert), a cartoon cop.
Hill and Smallwood have a living relationship that makes us believe they have really been with each other for a thousand years. Hill, in particular, reveals both sweetness and immense passion. The director of the dance-like movement, Dayna Taymor, makes the couple adapt perfectly to Nwandu’s musical text.
These scenes with Ebert, a fantastic physical actor, as we’ve seen in “Matilda” and “Brief Encounter” – are silly and terrifying, and the quick change of tone really grabs you by the neck.
And then, after half an hour of dropped tension, comes the strange end. Nwandu has been changing its latest scene since “Pass Over” premiered in Chicago in 2017, and this is its weirdest iteration to date. I won’t go into too much detail, but there is one God of the machine, a spectacular turn of events, as you like to call it and a much more expensive ending. Instead of the influx of emotions it seeks to provoke, the sequence evokes a college classroom. It’s not a thrilling drama.
However, I admire Nwandu’s goal with his alterations. An earlier ending, which can be seen on Amazon Prime under the direction of Spike Lee, had to clash with explicit and obvious confrontation and politics. Today the play fades with a spirit of unity and the dream of something even better to come. This is the right choice: it just needs to be clearer.