Two young Black men on a street corner. Just standing, not doing shit, but because they’re standing on a city street in America, they know the words white people use like a spell to label them: stupid. Lazy. Violent. So they summon words of their own. In Pass Over, Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu‘s stunning mix of comedy and tragedy, words are music, a chant to hold back fear and invoke courage. To say what it would take to leave this street.
But they might be stuck here because time might not be moving. Or the weight of hope might crush them. They may be stuck on this street, with one hoodie between them and a shallow stone ledge to lean against. Nwandu uses poetic Black English to capture the arc from sorrow to joy, sprinkling in surreal and comic exaggeration. The production by Lost Nation Theater engages a Black director and extraordinary actors to reveal the script’s power.
On this barren sidewalk, Moses (Brandon Burditt) and Kitch (DIJI) begin another day. Kitch rouses his friend, who’s asleep against a windowless building, and Moses’ first words when startled awake are “Kill me now!” To which Kitch replies, “Bang bang,” grinning, springing like a dancer and waving finger guns. It’s an exchange they’ll repeat and embellish. The play is a ritual of words made musical by Black voices.
The performances give the script’s language hypnotic power. Moses and Kitch understand each other, and the words they toss back and forth are often incomplete thoughts clarified by complete beats. They conjure a dream of the promised land, somewhere beyond this city block. They list what’s waiting for them, including clean socks and collard greens. Also, Moses’ brother, back from the dead.
Moses vows to “git my ass up off dis block.” It’s a dream, and he knows very well it’s what the Old Testament’s Moses offered the enslaved people of Egypt. Maybe the sea will part and Kitch and Moses can walk through. Maybe they’ll share a crust of pizza Kitch has been saving. Maybe no Black man will be killed tonight.
Maybe they’ll survive the white men they meet, Mister and Ossifer (both played by Orlando Grant). Mister, the one in the white suit with a picnic basket claiming to be lost, might mean no harm. He says he’ll share the food he has. But he also says his name is Master, and the time might be 1855 and the place might be a plantation. And the white man with the gun and the nightstick — the one provoking them, frisking them, whacking them — maybe he’ll let them go when he’s done.
Maybe tomorrow will be different. Nwandu intends a parallel with Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s play of futility floating above his characters’ indomitable will to go on. In both plays, a cycle repeats that seems to prove progress is impossible. But repetition also makes the ability to continue a supreme act of defiance.
Pass Over is a window on the numbingly mundane, but Nwandu strips away every distraction to stir the viewer’s attention to pain, hope, fear, hate and joy. Then she balances the abstraction with comic hyperbole, showing fear with minstrel-show exaggeration and deep truth with bizarre fantasy.
Nwandu uses poetic Black English to capture the arc from sorrow to joy.
Above all, the play is pure speech flowing like a river. The language rings like verse, and it rests on words that could bother some people, so steer clear if profanity disturbs you or if Black people using the N-word offend. Here, those words are used to demonstrate the essence of communication. Moses and Kitch rarely explain anything to each other. They use “fuck” as an all-purpose expression to intensify a thought, without needing to say more. They repeat. And they speak in beats, letting silence carry meaning.
Director Taneisha Duggan lets the script’s intoxicating rhythms guide the production. She uses the vivid clarity of dance in Kitch’s restlessness and Moses’ quiet assembly of his thoughts. A good director’s hand is invisible, but we see the result in the commitment and harmony of these performances.
Burditt plays the many edges of Moses, a character with a leader’s certainty and a Black man’s hard-earned terror. In one slow, stunning moment, Burditt compresses Moses’ huge dreams into a tight clench of his baseball cap.
As Kitch, DIJI jumps and stretches with unquenchable energy. He’s a kinetic force, roughhousing with Moses and grabbing hold like a little brother who doesn’t want to be left behind.
Grant gives Ossifer a commanding presence and Mister a ghastly false gentility. His characters are coherent enough to threaten Moses and Kitch yet fantastical as well, a cunning balance.
Scenic designer Kim Bent creates an imposing streetscape scrubbed of humanity. The sidewalk has the weight of concrete, and the stone wall is intimidating in its blankness. Though the intimate theater can’t contain an urban wasteland, Bent’s design compensates.
Lighting designer Samuel J. Biondolillo makes overt the play’s many shifts in tone. He keeps the audience’s experience intense by using lighting to follow the action rather than lead it.
The costume design by Cora Fauser gives Moses and Kitch just-right streetwear and presents Mister in a white suit supernaturally perfect enough to make his appearance disconcerting. But Fauser dresses Ossifer in khakis that at best summon up the bumbling Barney Fife. With a too-short tie and a spindly gun belt, Ossifer is no city cop. It’s possible Duggan and Fauser chose to defuse menace with comedy, but it seems a false note.
Pass Over was first performed in 2017 and reached Broadway in 2021. It crackles with immediacy, reflecting the repercussions of murders beginning with Trayvon Martin, extending to George Floyd and still very far from ending. Viewers can find hope, but not the easy kind from characters claiming their dreams. These characters are singing a lament, the music of healing.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Word on the Street | Theater review: Pass Over, Lost Nation Theater”
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2023.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
