Alcohol, incest, and pedophilia

COURTESY WILLIAM S. YELLOW ROBE, JR.

Dramas like William S. Yellow Robe, Jr.'s The Independence of Eddie Rose, the inaugural play of the "new" Whitney Humanities Center Gymnasium Drama Space, demand a kind of culturally mandated respect that makes me uneasy. In the words of the program, Eddie Rose is "not an easy play to `digest;' it doesn't offer simplistic answers to complex problems...[It] is a story that ought to be heard."

In other words, this is an Important Play, and, at the risk of seeming un-PC, I'm not a big fan of plays that are considered Important merely because they represent marginal voices. I'm a fan of good plays, plays that are important because they explore truths in human experience.

What a happy discovery it was, then, to find then that Yellow Robe's play is first and foremost about people. Those people are Native American and their heritage informs their experience. There's no mistaking the opening chants and background music of authentic-sounding tribal rhythm for anything else, and the story simply wouldn't be possible without the unique social, religious, and geographical matrix that guides each character's every step.

What a shame, also, that Eddie Rose realizes it's an Important Drama, with Important Social Statements to make to its audience. The independence that the eponymous Eddie (Manuel I. Negron, PC '99) achieves isn't really an independence from an alcoholic mother or from his own self-defeating cowardice, but from a laundry list of tortures that would make Job blush.

On his reservation and in his house, Eddie suffers with an abusive alcoholic mother, her scummy alcoholic boyfriend, frequent incest , rape, pedophilia, spiritual and moral bankruptcy, mental abuse, depression, and the absence of a father who bashed Eddie's head into the wall when he was an infant and then promptly took off.

Underlying every action is a ferocious lust for sex and violence that makes the reservation world feel raw and animalistic. Perhaps it's because the play is short, but it also seems like all we get is a relentless series of vignettes that plunge us deeper and deeper into hell. It's not tough to feel sympathy for these characters--because there isn't anything else to feel for them.

The story is mostly a frame on which to hang character portraits, alternately insightful and unbearable, illustrating many desperate Native American lives. Katherine Rose (Tevis Garrett Graddy, BK '99) has just thrown her boyfriend Lenny (Michael Braun, TC '00) out for stealing some money she's been saving for her son, Eddie. By the end, she'll have Lenny back, and Eddie will have to reject her and the cycle. The drama here is mostly domestic: Eddie wants to escape from his miserable life, but he's stopped by a sister, Theia (Chipo Chung, TC '00), and an aunt, Thelma (Clelia Peters, BK '00), who keep conferring familial responsibilites on him throughout the production.

Eddie's the philosophical sort, although he seems a little opaque as played by Negron, who has evidently been told to deliver each line with an unnatural inflection and pause ("Can I ask you--pause--something?") so that he seems more out of breath than unacquainted with English speech patterns. He climbs a rock and talks to his ancestors, finds guidance by burning herbs with Aunt Thelma, and engages in some genuinely heartfelt moments of spiritual connection, providing a glimmer of hope in this godless universe.

There's also a fairly pointless subplot involving Eddie's friend Mike (Vayu O'Donnell, DC '99), which has the unfortunate effect of making Eddie look archetypal as it complicates the action. Like Eddie, Mike wants to escape; like Eddie, Mike's been in trouble for drug use; and like Eddie, Mike's got problems with his mother--out with the boys one night, he found out she was a prostitute and almost shagged her.

All right, so Eddie didn't have to fondle a guard and then beat him senseless in jail; they're not twins. But Mike is so much like Eddie that you begin to get that sinking feeling that you are watching archetypes of Ruined Native American Youth in an Important Play, rather than three-dimensional characters.

Yellow Robe writes in epithets and broad strokes; long, lyrical expositions of the past that reveal character in obvious ways rather than letting us get to know them through their words and actions. Although Katherine is maternal and pitiable, she's pretty much drunk through the whole play.

Though we learn about Lenny's sad past in rehab through a monologue, he's mostly a cartoon villain. Peters does a noble job with Thelma, who could be just a victim, but is here a stalwart keeper of the faith, torn between duty, tradition, and her sister. Chung is also pathetically impish as Theia, and conveys a real sense of the deep emotional scarring of this continuing horror.

The sets by Justin Beal, CC '01, are Sudler Fund Modern, minimalistic and efficient without being overly elegant. This is especially true considering how unwieldy the gym is as a locale for a dramatic production.

By the climax of the play--which is less inevitable than it is self-consciously shocking--I wanted to rescue Eddie, and all these other poor characters, from their plight, which is caused by both an indifferent American society, as well as the cowardice of the characters. But, mostly, I wanted the tedium of their struggle to end. If Yellow Robe wanted me to empathize with the characters, then this production is a success; however, in terms of dramatic suspense, it is surely a disappointment.

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