Broadway’s Back with a Bullet

By Naomi Serviss

“Mounting evidence shows that deaths at the hands of the police disproportionately impact people of certain races and ethnicities, pointing to systemic racism in policing.”

The Lancet, October 2, 2021

Last week I saw Pass Over,

Broadway’s first play to open

since the virus snuffed New York theater on March 12th, 2020.

It was a revelation.

Pass Over, running at the August Wilson Theatre,

is not only

an allegorical and literal explosion

of racism, poverty, and police violence

towards urban Black communities,

writ large.

This topically profound existential drama, by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu

sends up Moses’ Biblical pledge

to emancipated Jewish slaves

of reaching the Promised Land.

Pass Over deftly alludes

to the identically named Jewish holiday

with humorous cynicism.

Think Waiting for Godot tweaked with

Exodus and the Old Testament’s Moses

parting the Red Sea.

Director Danya Yaymore weaves parallel existences

with the banality of everyday, repetitive life

and magical thinking.

Actors John Michael Hill, Namir Smallwood and Gabriel Ebert

suck the oxygen out of the room

with every passionate diatribe or plaintive wail.

Not a breath is wasted as

the characters banter, spar and

word- and gun-play.

The bleak set, a grey study in shadowy

despair echoes the actors’ inconsistencies,

until a twist ending throws preconceived

notions out the window.

Break-your-heart acting,

elevated and devasting.

The audience roared when the play concluded,

even if there wasn’t blanket approval

of the N-word tsunami

to which they had just been exposed.

A perfect Broadway welcome-back-to-live-theater experience!

That’s entertainment!

Admittedly, I wasn’t thrilled when the beefy security team

vaccine-carded and photo-ID’ed me before allowing entrance.

Keeping a mask on for the play’s duration was at first uncomfortable,

but I quickly became used to it.

It helped that the theater was kept quite cold.

This is the new Broadway normal.

It could always be worse.

Masked patrons were well-behaved

and seatmate strangers

avoided knees and arm-resting elbows.

The inevitable foot banging

against my seat back was annoying.

A bare minimum of candy unwrapping

and thankfully, just one coughing bout.

The woman behind me gave an on-the-spot oral

critique

midway through the intense, intermission-less drama.

“Oh, come on!” she objected, loudly.

It wasn’t surprising,

considering it was a local crowd after all.

Tourists aren’t known to vocally protest dialogue.

As theater hopefully stays off life support

and tourists test the waters,

common courtesy mores might need refreshing.

If you are a guest,

never exclaim snarkily and loudly upon the first scene’s unfolding:

“I hate it already.”

That will be said guest’s last freebie,

even if she is a relative.

Broadway’s Pass Over’s limited run ends on October 10th,

but Spike Lee’s acclaimed filmed production

by the same name is available on Amazon Prime.

Broadway theaters have extended mask and vaccination requirements

for audiences through year’s end.

This will be re-evaluated in January.

The Broadway League announced

that operators and owners of all Broadway theaters

will continue to require

audience members, performers, backstage crew, and theater personnel to wear masks and be vaccinated before entry.

With proof.

Seeing rows of masked and fully vaccinated patrons was reassuring.

It wasn’t an ideal reopening, but

when the first line was uttered, my emotions were stirred

and I was grateful for those stashed tissues in my pocket.

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Naomi Serviss is a New York-based award-winning journalist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Highroads (AAA magazine), in-flight publications, spa and travel magazines and websites, including BroadwayWorld.com