Even experienced playwrights hit clunkers now and then. Samm-Art Williams' turn has come up at the Black Rep, where his "Montfort Point Marine" had its world premiere over the weekend and will run through June 26. A busy playwright, Williams has written successful works like "Home," and "The Dance on Widows' Row," for previous Black Rep seasons.
Hard to say what went wrong along the way, but the play is flat. If it were a car, all four tires would be flat, too. And except for some bright, slightly bawdy comedy early in the second act, it's a play that just lies there. Williams had a fairly clever gimmick to his tale, but there are large obstacles and too many times when overcoming disbelief is impossible.
It's a waste of good actors, too. J. Samuel Davis is Robert Charles Wilson, a long-retired Marine who fought in the South Pacific with a segregated group of warriors. His home, on a set designed by Jim Burwinkel, looks ready for inspection. The Montfort Point Marines were World War II enlisted men who had trained with other black troops at a North Carolina base run by white officers. They then were dispatched to combat zones, usually without weapons.
Wilson, from Philadelphia, married Gwendolyn (Linda Kennedy), a North Carolinian, but the Mason-Dixon Line divided them as it divided North and South. They had a child, Robert Charles Jr. (Chauncy Thomas), and they loved the lustful life they lived, but she moved out, though they apparently never divorced. How much time their son spent with one parent or the other is unclear, but he drops in one day, proclaims his wealth and success. There's a knock on the door.
Guess who? Yup.
Williams grinds his starter motor, but there's never a spark. Lots of declaiming by Davis, and some singing, too. Thomas has a giant ego, Kennedy is her usual fine self, though she seems a little unsure as a coquette. Whit Reichert rounds out the cast as several different characters.
The Montfort Point Marine, a production of the St. Lois Black Repertory Company, continues at the Grandel Theater