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Just before the Roundabout revival of Alice Childresss masterpieceTrouble in Mindbegins,the preshow announcement offers us some context.
After welcoming us back to live performance, the voice welcomes Childressherself to Broadway, about six decades late.
Their Broadway production was scrapped.)
The text still contains astonishing power; it could have been written yesterday.
ForTrouble,Childress imagined an empty theater itself as her set, then populated it with theaters familiar types.
To quote another show thats a couple of blocks away at the moment:same as it ever was.
(Emilio Sosa did the costume design.)
In response, LaChanzes glow expands, a star going nova.
But then the others enter.
The Black actors come early; the white ones trickle in.
Hes pretty sure hes a genius, so why cant she get on his level?
As the others rush to do his bidding, Manners deliberately provokes her, isolates her, ignores her.
But its the arts, darling so he also keeps saying he loves her.
It also weakens much of the satire.
Part of the problem is the theater itself.
The Roundabouts American Airlines is a barn, a huge, wide, intimacy-killing room.
Childress offers a story that implies comic business andbustle and yet theres little of that here.
He blustered and laughed, shook his head at everyone elses nonsense.
But every time he got still, it was like a storm was gathering.
You could see the light darken around his head; you could feel the air fill with trouble.
Trouble in Mindis at the American Airlines Theatre through January 9.
