Finding North and South at HOME — Review

A mostly comic one-act about a Southern Black man’s journey North and back, Samm-Art Williams’ Tony-nominated 1979 play, Home, arrives back on Broadway in a winning production directed by Kenny Leon. The slight, earnest work is given weight by its lived-in nuances and social resonance, and Williams infuses a sense of poetics (very ‘70s, and rather missed) into the tale of one Cephus Miles (Tory Kittles), recounted by him and two women (Brittany Inge and Stori Ayers) who play numerous supporting roles. 

But before we’re introduced to him, we’re alerted to how many of us might perceive his type, were we to encounter him on a Manhattan avenue; those lonely, disheveled men “with the sad, displaced faces.” It wasn’t always that way for Cephus, who grew up getting into rascally adventures on North Carolina farmland. His attempts to bed his childhood sweetheart Pattie Mae Wells (Inge) involve a shotgun baptism and a thwarted trip to the hayloft; the stuff of pastoral picaresques.

Then Pattie Mae leaves him, and Cephus’ uncle dies in his arms, leading him to believe God has taken off to a permanent Miami vacation. He ignores the urge to take his business to the Northern cities, but before he can wind up an old man spinning tales, as a local woman warns (Ayers plays the sassier ones), he’s locked up for refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War. This country, he finds out, does not honor his commandments that thou shall not kill, but instead love thy neighbor. He’s released five years later and makes it to New York, where his luck gets no better.

Williams’ language is contagiously rhythmic, softer in the South and cynical up North, and the actors deliver dynamic performances, though they breathlessly barrel through the first few scenes. Leon, though always a casting dynamo, typically directs towards the finish line, and the play’s meandering molasses of a dramatic structure coagulates a bit. The production’s tone – especially as seen through Arnulfo Maldonado’s down-home set and Dede Ayite’s nostalgic costumes – is likewise consistent, if to a fault. No part of Cephus’ life is portrayed as having any real danger, no matter how bleak Williams’ observations about incarceration and the prospects available to Black men in this country can be.

Leon’s Home opts for optimism and, as buoyed by Kittles’ irrepressible performance, this proves a fine enough choice. Had it leaned too hard on contemporary relevance – and, at times, I did question why this was being revived – it might have added corniness to a recipe already bordering on the saccharine. What’s perhaps most surprising is the evenhandedness of the play’s gender roles, with power distributed equally across sex, money, choice, and spirit, and the work carries with it a gentility and surety lacking in most contemporary voices. Williams, who passed a few days before this production began previews, seems to have possessed a strong compass, due North, born South.

Home is in performance through July 21, 2024 at the Todd Haimes Theatre on West 42nd Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.