Dominique Morisseau’s characters are, as the post-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon once described himself, often paralyzed “at the crossroads between nothingness and infinity.” Her plays craft realistic depictions of marginalized people inextricably caught in the tide of history.
In her 2013 piece “Sunset Baby,” receiving a potent revival at Signature Theater, Morisseau lays bare both a romantic relationship and a father-daughter drama while also exploring the effects of revolution, the deferment of dreams and the bind of being a Black woman in America.
The play’s complexities find their avatar in its hardened protagonist, Nina (Moses Ingram, making a strong New York stage debut). As a drug dealer and (as conjured by the costume designer Emilio Sosa’s tiny dress and thigh-high boots) a honey pot eking out a living in Brooklyn, Nina’s life is a far cry from the dreams envisioned by her Black revolutionary parents, who named her after the singer-activist Nina Simone.
After the death of her mother, Ashanti X, from a slow, ugly slide into addiction, Nina’s estranged father, Kenyatta Shakur (Russell Hornsby), reappears to collect a stash of letters her mother had written to him while he was a political prisoner.
Kenyatta seems earnest in his attempt to reconnect. But having prioritized the good fight over his family — and Nina’s poverty being the very thing he’d set out to combat — he is seen by Nina only as an absentee father, and she refuses to budge. (She had already rebuffed cushy offers from universities and publishers wanting to purchase the correspondences between her parents, adding to the list of forces — family, history, the government — seeking to take from her.)
Damon (J. Alphonse Nicholson), Nina’s devoted partner in love and crime, who thinks of the two as a righteous Bonnie and Clyde, adds relationships to that list. He finds in Kenyatta a kindred sense of anti-establishment disruption and, knowing some cash could take them out of the projects, tries to change her mind.
Morisseau’s choice to make this a tonal love poem to Nina Simone, whose life and music were rich with power and contradiction, is perfect. And this production, thoughtfully directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, highlights the musician’s presence over the material. A preshow voice-over quotes Simone’s belief that an artist’s duty is to reflect her times, and a final, gut-punching fade-out features her rendition of “Sinnerman” (“Where you gonna run to?”).
As in her other works, characters are both overwhelmed and motivated by forces beyond their control, and are charged with rhythmic, intelligent language that this tight ensemble wields beautifully. Through a series of two-hand conversations — equally compelling as human dramas and as social treatises — they debate ideas of liberation versus survival; lofty ideals versus lived realities.
Videos recorded live by Kenyatta, which punctuate the dialogue, are projected (by the designer Katherine Freer) onto a shabby apartment set (by Wilson Chin). He recalls memories of Kwame Ture speeches and of the future his generation tried to build. The heartbreaking Hornsby delivers them in the way a father might to a child he’ll never see again.
And then there’s Simone’s music. Some songs are dictated by the script, and others from her catalog are included by sound designers Curtis Craig and Jimmy Keys. Their soundscape creates a lush portrait of a woman born of, and torn by, impossible circumstances: the preacher’s daughter behind “Work Song”; the rueful mourner of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”; the swaggering, street-smart goddess who’s “Feeling Good”; and the disillusioned exile remembering “Baltimore.”
Morisseau imbues Nina with equal interior abundance, and Ingram embodies her with authoritative understanding. Refusing to condescend, the playwright inverts the melodramatic setup — how easily this could have fallen into “look how my daughter lives!” — to interrogate the way women and children frequently wind up the fallout of revolutionary men.
Ingram’s Nina is an unfussy, recognizable creation — an unshakable heroine worthy of her eponym, in a play whose revival reminds us of its writer’s ability to put a spell on us.
Sunset Baby
Through March 10 at the Signature Theater, Manhattan; signaturetheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.
