Review - Pipeline

One of my very favorite recent-ish theater experiences was seeing Dominique Morisseau's wonderful Skeleton Crew at the Atlantic Theater Company (you can remind yourself of that night HERE) - I was so happy to hear that Dominique will soon have work produced at my favorite space (Signature Theatre Company) and once I heard she was being produced at Lincoln Center this season, I made sure to pick up a ticket.  I will say that getting full-priced tickets to Lincoln Center is a costly endeavor these days and I was a little worried that I would be seeing the show on a Friday night and might be too tired to fully appreciate it, but I needn't have worried.  I had a marvelous time experiencing Pipeline.  I don't want to give too much away, so I won't be sharing much plot here - I think experiencing the play without knowing too too much is really powerful.

Pipeline is an intense piece about many things; well, not many things, exactly, maybe 'great big ideas' is more accurate, but the main character is Nya, a public school teacher and the divorced mother of a young man who is sliding out of her control. The first scene is Nya (played by the amazing Karen Pittman) leaving a voice mail message for her ex-husband about her son's latest troubling experience at his prep school - just in this one scene, I learned so much about the characters and the world of the play. It was so specific, yet so relatably universal, I was immediately pulled in.  As the play progresses, we see Nya's son Omari struggle with his future, and his prep school girlfriend, magnificently played by Heather Velazquez.  She is at once a laugh riot as a stereotypically egocentric teenage girl, and she's also a tragic figure because she knows she's bound to get left behind. We also meet another hardened teacher at Nya's school, Laurie, who is played with hilarious pathos and brio by Tasha Lawrence; the school's security guard who has a soft spot for Nya; and Omari's distant father, Xavier.  When the two men meet by accident late in the play, there's a lot of humor and a lot of electric danger in the air.

photo credit: Jeremy Daniel

Running through Pipeline and its fantastic dialogue are references to the Gwendolyn Brooks poem "We Real Cool," which we hear recited and interpreted several times, and its strong, bold, spare language is beautifully strange inside the incredibly stark truth that Dominique has running through the play. We also hear a lot about Richard Wright's Native Son, which is rather the inciter of the play's plot. Seeing how everything circles around education, knowledge, and the fear of both, is one of the many strengths of the play.  Another strength is the acting company, which is superb.  Every last cast member wrings every bit of truth out of their characters and they deliver Dominique's amazing dialogue so beautifully.  Some of the monologues are just transcendent - I wanted to remember every last word, but had to move on to experience what was happening next.

One of these quotes from my review of Skeleton Crew really rang true for me about Pipeline as well:  "The play is serious, funny, moving, tragic and authentic, all at once.  I knew these people, even while they were completely original, and I got so caught up in the situations that Dominique thought up for them."  Yes, yes, yes, to all that.  As a former teacher, the passion, the commitment, and the fears of the teachers rang so true to me. But as a white woman, hearing about the inherent obstacles and terrors a whole generation of students and parents experience was a real eye-opening lesson. I can never truly understand. I can't deny that at one point, about three-quarters of the way through the play, I just started weeping (in the best theatrical sense) at the accumulated emotion I had been experiencing.  And then I completely lost it during Omari's monologue to his father about why he did what he did at his school. I started thinking about my nephew, another boy who is angry and lost and doesn't know how to express it, so I started feeling fear, too. Which I know is nowhere near the fear of parents like Nya and Xavier.  I don't know, I can't really express myself as well as Dominique (who can?!), but all I know is that I learned something, I was moved by something, and maybe how I now think about things could be exponentially changed.  That adds up to some mighty fine theater, if you ask me.

The run of Pipeline is ostensibly sold out, but I saw a few empty seats at the theater last Friday night, so I'm guessing that cancellations are happening now and then.  Even though it was a pricey endeavor, I highly recommend that you go check out Pipeline.  For me, Dominique Morisseau is an important voice in the American theater and her work should be supported any way that we can.  You might learn something, too.