![]() ![]() Test your skills as a plane spotter watching the skies for enemy aircraft. But “Home Front” makes us long for the future when love, regardless of race or gender or sexuality, will no longer have to suffer the cruel indignities of discrimination.Discover Coastal Georgia’s extraordinary contributions to winning World War II. Leight doesn’t prettify the ugly side of our history. That he wins it anyway is a credit to his truthfulness as a performer. His performance exudes the courage of an actor who cares more about his character than audience approval. Garces occasionally calls attention to the melodramatic flourishes of the writing, but she is most natural in her character’s romantic devotion to James and in her easy banter with Edward.īut it’s Lindsey’s James who startles the play out its predictable maneuvers. Slavin has the audience eating out of the palm of his hand in a role that toys with stereotype but achieves surprising depth, despite the one or two moments when Edward uses language more befitting of a 21st century dean of diversity. Garces provides a touch of flightiness and gobs of tender poignancy as Annie Slavin supplies sparkling wit and a shadow of loneliness as Edward and Lindsey conveys stoic strength that turns by degrees to rage and regret as James. Her actors understand their roles perfectly. This is not to slight the production, muscularly directed by Maria Gobetti, co-artistic director of the Victory Theatre Center. The drama sometimes has the feeling of a treatment - the blueprint for a work that has yet to discover its organic detail. If anything, the succession of scenes might be a touch too orderly. Repertory presentation at the Hudson MainStage Theatre.Īuthor of the Tony-winning drama “Side Man,” Leight has had tremendous success in television as a writer-producer on the “Law & Order” franchise, HBO Max’s “In Treatment” and FX’s “Lights Out.” His professional polish is on display in “Home Front,” which carefully arranges the storytelling so that nothing is left to chance. Tony winner John Rubinstein stars in Richard Hellesen’s biographical drama “Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground,” a Theatre West and New L.A. Leight wondered what it would have been like had a Black man and white woman been similarly swept up in the jubilation of the moment, though in this scenario what transpires is more complicated than a fleeting romantic impulse.Įntertainment & Arts Review: The main reason to see “Eisenhower”? Actor John Rubinstein’s earnest portrayal of Ike ![]() The play, which is having its West Coast premiere at the Victory Theatre Center in Burbank, was apparently inspired by “V-J Day in Times Square,” the famous photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt of a returning serviceman sweeping a total stranger off her feet and planting a kiss on her lips. Lindsey), one of the few Black naval officers during WWII, and Annie Overton (Austin Highsmith Garces), a widow eagerly looking for a new start for herself and her country, fall in love not just with each other but also with the prospect of a more evolved America. The issue here isn’t fate or character shortcomings but a flaw in society itself.įull of optimism when they meet during V-J Day festivities in New York, Lt. In “Home Front,” playwright Warren Leight imagines the lives of an interracial couple whose hopes for the future at the end of World War II are systematically dashed by the slow pace of societal change. If only the timing had been different or a certain heedless action avoided, the longed-for happy ending might not have been preempted by calamity. If only this had happened instead of that. There’s a thin line between comedy and tragedy, as Othello and Romeo and Juliet could attest (had they survived their plots).
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