If ever there was a play that speaks to our time and our inability to listen to each other, it is Eleanor Burgess’s The Niceties, now playing at the Geffen Playhouse. It’s a two-character play filled with so many ideas that you might find yourself doing the mental equivalent of watching a tennis match – you go back and forth completely understanding what each character has to say. And that’s why The Niceties, running through May 12th, is must-see theatre.
Set in 2016, Lisa Banes plays Janine Bosko, a tenured teacher at an unnamed university, who teaches history. She’s perhaps mid-50s and has made a career for herself for her innate understanding of history and the violent revolutions that didn’t work and the non-violent one that did – the American revolution. She’s an Obama voter and looking forward to Hillary Clinton being elected the first female president.
Jordan Boatman plays Zoe Reed, an African-American student in her junior year who has worked very hard on her paper and has taken it in for early review by Bosko in hopes of assuring herself the grade she needs to attain a job she’s seeking once she graduates. Reed is an activist and spends considerable time protesting and standing up for various issues. Her perspective on the American revolution is something her professor cannot accept, at least not without documented evidence.
On paper these two women would seem to have much more in common than not. However, their view of history, and the role of racism in history, is not remotely the same. And it is those fundamental differences that put the two at odds during the play.
While comparisons to David Mamet’s Oleanna might seem appropriate, Burgess’s play is equally interested in what we hear others say and what those words mean as she is in the words themselves. The Niceties serves as first-rate theatre that mirrors our contemporary world. It’s not just the talking heads that permeate news cycles who can learn a thing or two about compassion and listening. It’s all of us.
Both Banes and Boatman are completely natural in their roles. There doesn’t seem to be a shred of “acting” going on. These two women finely own their characters and their identities. Kimberly Senior directs this amazing production.
You will find yourself vacillating between each woman as they both have perspectives worthy of agreement. Rarely have I heard so many theatergoers buzzing after a performance. Our responsibility is figuring out what to do after we’ve had those conversations.
For tickets go here.
Main Photo: Lisa Banes and Jordan Boatman in “The Niceties” (Photo by T. Charles Erickson)
All photos by T. Charles Erickson/Courtesy of the Geffen Playhouse
