By Richard Lord
As we settle into our seats, we naturally start scoping out the set. This set looks like a hybrid courtroom/ church. Actually, both of these quick impressions prove valid, as the play begins and ends in a church funeral service for Bayard Rustin, while most of the play involves the trials of Rustin. Not the actual courtroom trial of Rustin, which assigned him to Kentucky’s Ashland Federal Prison for three years, but the trials of public opinion, common prejudice, and acid tests of his own firmly held principles.
The funeral which opens the show with begins with a rousing gospel number. The female pastor interrupts the singing (of which she is the primary voice) to deliver a brief eulogy to the extraordinary man whose life is being celebrated at this ceremony. She enumerates the multifaceted achievements of the man Bayard Rustin. Rustin, we learn, was a Quaker devoted to the principles of non-violence; he was a tireless campaigner for justice for various minorities; he was a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, whom he taught the benefits of non-violence; he was one of the main organizers of the iconic March on Washington; he fought for the rights of workers and the marginalized.
All of these achievements are presented in call-and-response fashion, with the small group of cast members serving as a larger assembly of Rustin supporters. The funeral-goers bark out a positive response to every aspect of Rustin’s life and personality – until the pastor mentions one essential aspect: homosexual. Then it’s as if she suddenly yanked open a trap door under the congregation; the response this time is a chill silence. And that moment captures the central tragedy of Bayard Rustin’s life.
Looking at a subject with such a long, rich, diverse career, playwright Stephen H. Broadnax III has wisely chosen to focus in on just one relatively short episode in Rustin’s life: his time as a prisoner of conscience during World War II.
As mentioned by others several times in the play, Rustin’s residency at Ashland Prison was something of a principled choice. As a Quaker, he could have claimed conscientious objector status during World War II. Nevertheless, he rejected this privilege and was drafted. Rustin and several other members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a staunchly pacifist group, sought to show their opposition to the very concept of America’s military draft and, indeed, the war itself. At what was to be his military induction, Rustin steadfastly refused to take the physical, or any, test. This was a serious violation of the Selective Service Act as the war raged in Europe and the Pacific, so in 1944, Rustin was headed off to Ashland, where he would spend just under a year before an unrequested transfer to Lewisburg Prison here in Pennsylvania.
But even behind prison walls, remained the non-violent warrior for social justice and racial equality even while in prison. The cell blocks and eating facilities at Ashland were racially segregated. Prison officials claimed that the facilities were “roughly” equal. Rustin had grown up experiencing the fallacy of “separate but equal”, so he started to push strongly for widespread integration within the prison.
This drive for true equality quickly becomes the central dramatic conflict of the play. As we know, Kentucky is more of a Southern than a Northern state, and many of the white prisoners at Ashland were from even deeper parts of the South. Nor should we forget that most of the US in the 1940s was rigidly segregated, often more de facto than de jure. The Ashland warden, not surprisingly, did not agree to Rustin’s request to integrate the prison. “Does not agree” is putting it mildly, and in the play, author Broadnax presents this as a serious test of wills. We watch as this “angelic troublemaker” (Rustin’s own pet phrase) moves from requests to protests to staging a hunger strike in support of his desire to achieve within Ashland Prison what still remained a wish-for dream in most parts of the United States.
Playwright Broadnax makes the conflict a bit more complex. In the early scenes, prison warden Robert P. Hagerman comes off as an overbearing, cold-hearted martinet. As the play moves on, we see that Hagerman is more complex. He’s ready to bend a little this way or that. He even sees the virtue in Bayard’s requests – it’s just that he’s not ready to take any risks in an environment where risks can rapidly spin into catastrophe.
Inside Ashland features two sets of struggles facing off against each other. Warden Hageman has to fight against his own impulse to do the right thing while he fights against this self-proclaimed troublemaker. At the same time, Bayard Rustin has to fight for his ideals of non-violence and racial justice while dealing with his own physical desires as a young gay man surrounded by hundreds of other young men. That last struggle proves to be a minefield that can scuttle everything else Rustin seeks to achieve at Ashland.
Although the Rustin-Hagerman conflict is the central clash in the play, it’s not the only problem the title character has to deal with. His life before incarceration intrudes on his prison life with the appearance of a number of visitors in prison, including his pacifist mentor A.J. Muste, his long-time lover Davis Platt, and his mother Florence. All urge Bayard to be careful and (with the exception of Muste) be more open to compromise. The emotional pressures brought upon Bayard by those he knows well and loves adds to the drama here.
Rustin is also sexually attracted to a number of men in the prison, especially one married prisoner who takes a music course Bayard teaches at Ashland. In the early 1940s, even those liberals who strongly supported the fight for racial justice drew a deep line when it came to accepting LGBTQ rights. Bayard Rustin, activist and homosexual, has to decide how he can deal with this challenge.
There are those who will tell you that playwrights should never direct their own plays. That’s a position I find generally erroneous, and Stephen H. Broadnax III here gives ample evidence of just how wrong those who take that position can sometimes be. It appears that Broadnax came into this production with a securely rooted sense of the strengths and weak points of the script and what was needed to make all elements work well. My own sense is that the production would not have been as successful had someone other than Broadnax been at the helm.
Broadnax was greatly aided by the strong cast he and People’s Light put together. Reggie D. White gives a stellar performance as Bayard. It’s a difficult balancing act to portray the obvious strengths and the nagging weaknesses of this activist, but White pulls it off beautifully.
Eunice Woods is admirable in the dual roles of the minister at the funeral services and Florence, Bayard’s biological mother. (Bayard actually grew up believing Florence was his older sister and his grandmother was his mother. His father never married his mother and disappeared early from the lives of Bayard and Florence.)
Erik Raymond Johnson handles Warden Hagerman very well. Johnson shows the nasty resolve of the warden when such is called for, but he also skillfully shows Hagerman’s uneasiness with his own actions and dictates. Letting doubts and regrets surface briefly as the drama grinds on, Johnson gives the needed complexity to this central antagonist. (Interestingly, Johnson was also the intimacy/fight director of the production.)
David Watkins plays fellow inmate Tennessee, the singing student Bayard is physically drawn to. Tennessee is forced to confront different contradictions with himself and is also faced with a difficult decision regarding charges levelled against Bayard. Watkins does a fine job at showing how a simple man in a squeezed situation deals with such conflicts.
Price Waldman is generally upbeat as the dapper A.J. Muste, the Quaker minister and devout pacifist who was an important political mentor to Rustin. Muste is one of the easier roles through most of his appearance, but at a key moment when Muste believes that Rustin has crossed a blood-red line and betrayed their common cause, Waldman proves quite up to the task.
Jessie Corbin is solid in a number of roles, most notably as Bayard’s lover Davis. Helen Maria White takes on a variety of secondary roles that play a not insignificant part in making the production strong.
One of the key elements of Rustin’s life that the pastor overlooked in her eulogy was that Rustin was a most accomplished singer. So accomplished, in fact, that he earned music scholarships to the two colleges he attended and for a short time was a member of a gospel group, Josh White and the Carolinians, with whom he made several popular recordings. He also performed in a Broadway production with Paul Robeson.
This aspect of the Rustin C.V. is amply displayed in this show. Inside Ashland could be fairly described as a musical because of the various musical numbers, powerfully performed by a few of the cast members – especially Reggie D. White and Eunice Woods. The numbers here are predominately of gospel, blues and soul flavors, and fit the fit the mood of the script perfectly. Composer and arranger Jason Michael Webb along with music director Rashad McPherson deserve much credit for the success of this aspect of the show.
Credit here also goes to set and scenic designer Michael Carnahan and lighting designer Alan C. Edwards as well as other members of the creative crew.
Bayard Rustin Inside Ashland runs at People’s Light Theatre, 39 Conestoga Road, Malvern through June 12. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday performances at 7:30 p.m.; two performances on Saturday, June 4, at 2:00 and 8:00; a single 8:00 performance on Saturday, June 11; Sundays, only one performance, at 2:00. There will also be a single 2:00 p.m. performance on Wednesday, June 8.