Theater Review: Ain’t No Mo Takes You On A “Reparations” Flight
Jordan E Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo, playing at The Public Theater till April 1, is one of the funniest, most poignant plays on race I have ever seen. The premise, itself, offers a wealth of material; with Obama heading out of office, every black person in America is “offered” a “reparations flight” back to Africa. As sketches roll, you see it is a forced exit, and every African American is griping with the fact that they have built this country’s empire while it never respected their lives matter.
With Kimie Nishikawa’s gorgeous, changing set and Montana Levi Blanco’s fierce costuming, the play starts with a funeral of “Brother Right To Complain;” who died when Obama became president. His name and its death symbolizes how Obama was portrayed as an embodiment of racism’s end and an aid to elevating the black community. The entire cast enters your frame with a bang. Fedna Jacquet, Crystal Lucas-Perry, Simone Recasner, Ebony Marshall-Oliver, and Marchant Davis are all exceptional actors. This is NOT an easy play for an actor. Each sketch lasts 10 -15 minutes, and demands a range of emotions and outlandish personalities that are never the same as the last. It is an acting Olympics of which each actor makes themselves mesmerizing and memorable, especially because this is a play about disappointment.
As the funeral ends with its attendees’ affirmation that Obama has “freed” the black community, news’ reels go off about things such as, police brutality. It is clear that things have gotten worse for blacks, and Cooper’s writing is lush with symbolism. From a slave that is fed money in hopes her skin will change to a female prisoner that refuses to leave jail because her “joy” is not inside her bag of returned items, Ain’t No Mo is as much about money as it is about race. Cooper brilliantly shows that racism is profitable, and African American history and creativity is a most lucrative product controlled by white hands. While white people are not outwardly named, instead being called “they” or “The Powers That Be,” every member in that audience, including whites, knew it was “them.” It is in this note that director Stevie Walker- Webb might as well have done his own version of Jordan Peele’s Us (lol!).
Webb’s direction turns Ain’t No Mo into a high-octane, socio-political version of Saturday Night Live for theater lovers. From the “Real Baby Mamas of Southside” to Cooper’s Peaches, the most hilarious, razor-tongued flight attendant to escort passengers, this play is sketch comedy finesse. You laugh so much that you are shocked when you become quiet. Cooper and Webb plant wisdom and truths about prejudice like mines in their rhetorical field. At first, you giggle at Recasner’s Rachonda; a Rachel Dolezal type character, that truly believes gulping hot sauce every day will turn her black. Yet, her outlandishness is real, and her disrespect towards what signifies blackness is disgusting. Hence, Webb and Cooper’s mission is complete. They take everything we laugh off and wipe them down to their tragedies. Even Peaches becomes a symbol of how a prejudiced community can still hold its own prejudices; she is a black man in open drag that is about to go to Africa, forever, and fears for her life. Yet, again, money moves her, as well.
From a wealthy, black family that refuses to go on the last flight to Africa with “the poor” of their community to women aborting their unborn, black children so they do not end up killed or arrested by cops, in 100 minutes you see how uncomfortable it is to be black in America. It is a constant push to the depths of what history and humanity is truly worth when your appearance is treated as less. Thus, Ain’t No Mo is exuberant and fabulously hilarious, but, like many comedies, it is based on human atrocities. For More Information On Ain’t No Mo And To Buy Tickets Click Here.
