In theory a play that tries to do too much should be more satisfying than one that tries to do too little. In practice you wind up with Good Bones, which would appear to have a solid foundation, not least because author James Ijames won a Pulitzer for the bracingly funny Fat Ham, which was also staged at the Public (and then on Broadway) by the same director, Saheem Ali. But it’s a slender construction ill-suited to the weighty ideas it sketches in one long act.
The subject (one of them, at least) is gentrification and its discontents, viewed through the prism of class and not race (all four characters are black). Aisha (Susan Kelechi Watson) and her husband Travis (Mamoudou Athie) have returned to her hometown and are renovating an old house in a neighborhood that has gone to seed. (The playwright grew up in Philadelphia but the city is never named.) But Aisha has a grander reno in mind–she’s a marketer for a sports company that’s planning to build a venue nearby, bringing in jobs and dollars but inevitably displacing long-time residents. One of them, Earl (Khris Davis), is their contractor, and equally inevitably he and Aisha come to butt heads over the situation. Earl has fond memories of the housing project they both grew up in, which Aisha, a pragmatist fixed on the future, does not share. Cue bickering. (Joni Mitchell’s lyric from her classic song “Big Yellow Taxi,” “They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot” is argued.)
Did I mention there are four characters in this show? It’s easy to forget, as Ijames hasn’t given the other two much to do. Travis, who comes from money, dickers with Earl over his pricey handcrafted knobs, plans a fancy tandoori lamb meal (he hopes to be a chef), and puts up with Aisha’s aspirations as they consider having a baby. Earl’s sister Carmen (Téa Guarino), a UPenn student, stops over, introduces another soon-to-be-dropped subject by talking about code-switching in and out of the neighborhood, then comes back to attend Travis’ meal. At least she’s lively; Travis is a pain, and there’s a hint that despite their sociopolitical differences Aisha and Earl might make a better couple. But that tension goes nowhere.
Oh, and did I also mention that the house is haunted?
Well, sort of. Strange voices are heard, and a ball bounces down a staircase, like in an old Mario Bava horror picture. Would that there be a ghost tossing it, however. Foreboding houses recur in contemporary plays, be they afflicted by the past (as in Appropriate), the present (The Humans), or, whatever (Grey House). We fully expect Earl’s happy memories to collide metaphysically with Aisha’s corporate mindset, and the handsomely appointed production can certainly accommodate a poltergeist intrusion. (And needs one, too.) But, no. Just more stilted, circular chit-chat, delivered by actors reduced to the status of ambulatory talking points.
Good Bones has, at least, good bones, in its sleek, monochrome design (by Maruti Evans) and occasionally expressive lighting (Barbara Samuels) and sound (Fan Zhang). But Ijames needed to return it to the drafting table, to identify a theme and throughline and make it more inhabitable for an audience.
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