'Mary' and 'Jackie and Me': Two plays with very different takes on race
James (Scott Jaeck), David (Alex Weisman), Jonathan (Eddie Bennett) and Dolores (Barbara Garrick) have dinner while Mary (Myra Lucretia Taylor) tends to them.
• "Mary" at the Goodman Theatre: A provocation without much truth (review Feb. 14)
• "Jackie and Me": Powerful baseball play wins over the audience (review Feb. 14)
In a space of 48 hours last weekend, I saw a play, Steven Dietz's “Jackie and Me” by the Chicago Children's Theatre, wherein a white kid goes back in time and changes races to learn about Jackie Robinson, and another play, Thomas Bradshaw's “Mary” at the Goodman Theatre, wherein a white family in 1980s Maryland still keeps African-Americans as domestic slaves.
You sometimes hear, especially at election time, that Chicagoans don't like talking about race. Perhaps. But the Chicago theater certainly does what it can to encourage the conversation.
In many ways, these two pieces were polar opposites. “Jackie and Me,” which is aimed explicitly at young people, is an inherently hopeful play about race relations in America. Its message is one of reconciliation and empowerment: The young Polish-American hero takes a walk in someone else's shoes for a while and gets to better understand a hero who was formerly little more than a celebrated name on a school poster.
You could argue, I suppose, that it is simplistic or Pollyanna-ish. Or you could argue that it celebrates our power to learn, eventually, partly through empathy and partly through certain individuals who had the courage to hit their way past the ignorant.
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