Weakly Installed

Mary Wyatt Matters responds to the play "Tambourines to Glory", by Langston Hughes

I think the “big what” of Tambourines to Glory has to do with the human struggle to praise God and share His healing joy in an authentic and humble way. The two main characters, Essie and Laura, develop in this piece when they recognize the ways or habits in which they have most deeply offended God through their actions or inactions, and determine to rid themselves of those ways and habits. The play is about God’s forgiveness and the potential for human forgiveness.

The needs of this greater “what” depended upon certain moments in the play being highlighted. It was necessary to highlight Laura’s epiphany which led her to persuade Essie to help start up a preaching/gospel-singing racket on the street corner. It was important to display the depths to which Laura and Essie sunk under the Devil’s influence when it was wedded to their own weaknesses. Creative energy needed to be offered to the actor’s work in transforming from ‘sinner,’ to a ‘recognizer of sin,’ to a ‘humble confessor,’ to ‘healed and healer.’

Laura’s epiphany was partially muddled in terms of readability because of a few reasons. The actress was very distant from the sound of the choir (the director’s idea of portraying that inner inspirational experience), which, if the inspiration were figurative, the choir needn’t have been off stage and on the opposite side at all. The actors were also sometimes difficult to hear (though I was sitting very far left, which didn’t help) in that beginning scene as well as at the start when the Devil introduced himself. That entrance of the Devil did not seem to quite meet its full potential, either. His grand entrance from the huge doors along with the sounds of lightning wasn’t matched by the actor’s physicalization and text delivery right away. There was obviously difficulty with the microphones in this first production, which made me wonder how many times they were practiced with before the performance. Perhaps more directorial attention to early energy, character commitment, taking more time (and volume) could have been worked on further. There seemed to be a transformation in actor energy all around, however, once Essie started her song—more of a familiar groove (literally) was reached once that point hit. The attention which was related by the director to the cast in terms of all of the music was very strong—the characters and chorus really exuded spirit and energy while singing and responding to the songs. The band was also magical in its seamless involvement.
Certain points in staging stand out very strongly in the director’s focus on the character’s paths in sin and healing. Essie’s character is very passive (to her soul’s detriment) and the audience sees that when she often sits down and moves very little (and even though she is older, she moves just fine in the last scene, which depicts her shift from detrimental passivity to owning her power and decisions joyfully). Laura, on the other hand, is never at ease. She is always busy trying to grasp as much of the many evils in life as she can, before realizing that she is chasing the wrongs things that will never fulfill her. Therefore, her staging is always active, on the move, and aware of its next target. Her circle during her great monologue about her mother was so connected to different points in the room—the liquor, the door, the bedroom beyond. When she finally turned to see Essie asleep after traversing a full circle, the moment was funnier because the audience took that circuitous trip along with her and also didn’t notice that Essie wasn’t listening anymore. The final scenes of each half broke very elaborately with reality, and they mirrored each other in terms of celebration, though the duo of Buddy and Laura celebrating over their money should have displayed more grotesque-ness in order to contrast more strongly with the joyful celebration in the end (or perhaps I see throwing oodles of money around too positively—but then again, if I do, others may, too). Another incredibly strong staging moment during the main character’s struggles with sin was the brutal violence that Buddy (the Devil) inflicted upon Laura. The whole space of the room was used, almost too beautifully, but not unbelievably. The moment took on a balletic and full character which the slow-motion staging and commitment of the actors portrayed very solidly.

The point when Essie realized and expressed her bad deeds however wasn’t as strong as it could have been mostly because of the staging. Essie was upstage and in profile against the jail wall when she began to realize and declare the ways in which she was at fault for the desecration of her church. I also think that the actor needed to be encouraged to take more time in fully admitting her guilt, because that would have helped the audience recognize the importance of her admission. When Laura faced the choir/jury and professed her guilt and need for forgiveness, she was encouraged to take her time in saying a line I wrote down because it affected me so strongly: “I confess not for what my sin did to me, but for what my sin did to the Savior’s name.”

The final moment of the play affected me very strongly, and a large portion of its impact was the staging and direction. The scene opened up with an (almost negatively) absurd shift out of reality and into Essie and Brother Crow (?- Greer’s character) dancing together. As more dancers, choir, and characters arrive, we notice that this is partly a depiction of Essie’s daughter’s wedding, and Laura appears at the top of the stairs to join in. As she pauses just a moment to take in the joyful scene, Buddy (the Devil) appears as if out of nowhere, but really he had entered with the others and spun demonstratively out of the middle of the crowd. The two lock eyes, and I felt violated to find Buddy amidst this joyous, sacred celebration, and I was afraid of what he intended to do to ruin it. But Laura, if those thoughts entered her mind at all at that moment, was already past that human response before I was finished even feeling it, and expressed an enlightened one that caught me so off guard: She just made an indulgent shrug of good-humored acceptance and forgiveness, and proceeded to descend the stairs and join in the celebration. That was an amazingly staged moment whose impact and importance had been painstakingly built throughout the play by the director, his production, and every actor on stage.