"I am an Invisible Man," the opening line in Ralph Waldo Ellison's classic American novel, hangs in the air, waiting for a challenge, reverberating through the slowly quieting audience.
A black man stands on stage, clad in a white singlet, surrounded by a set representing his Harlem basement hiding place in the 1930's.
And so begins nearly three hours of fast paced, racy and at times difficult to grasp dialogue, ripped from a age and place few have traveled or even care to acknowledge.
Perhaps high schools teach Ellison's novel. If not they should, difficult as it may be, his work depicts a history that is uncomfortable and, like my adopted nation, still a work in progress.
With powerful and sustained cast performances, sets so incredible that I so want to photograph them as backdrops, it not only blazes to life in the Huntington Theater's production, but drives deep into the emotional core.
At times during the performance I felt deeply ashamed, none less so than when the Invisible Man speaks directly to the audience, fully exposed under house lights. Perhaps it's the fading echoes from the sins of our fathers, for surely all of our ancestors have acted themselves at some point in history in ways that we today regard as misguided.
I wish I could have slowed down some of the scenes, replayed them as with a book or a DVD, to grasp more fully the eloquence of both words and actions.
The final line from the Invisible Man rings as true today as it did then,
“Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”
Theater at its best and equal to any I have seen in London or New York.
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