“The Whipping Man” is steeped in the aftermath of battle
Obie Award-winning playwright Matthew Lopez explores the complexities of race and family through a post-Civil War lens — and through the resonance of a Passover Seder — in his powerful drama, “The Whipping Man,” presented by the Pasadena Playhouse in association with South Coast Repertory.
Directed with dexterous clarity by SCR co-founder Martin Benson, and performed by a superb cast headed by stage and screen veteran Charlie Robinson, “The Whipping Man” begins just days after the Civil War has ended, in the ruin of a once-elegant Southern mansion (hauntingly realized by scenic designer Tom Buderwitz and lighting designer Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz). There, the war’s consequences play out for three men intimately connected by bitter history and shared faith: Caleb, a wounded Confederate officer and the son of the house; and Simon and John, his father’s now ex-slaves.
Simon (Robinson), alone in the gutted house and armed against intruders, is awakened by Caleb (Adam Haas Hunter), who has fled home from the battlefield and collapsed with a festering bullet wound.
Caleb’s gangrenous leg must come off, but he refuses to be taken to a nearby Union Army field hospital, insisting that Simon perform the amputation. Simon had worked at the hospital during the war and describes in graphic detail what it will entail, but in the face of Caleb’s agitation, agrees.
John (Jarrod M. Smith), who had grown up as Caleb’s personal slave, and whose precipitous arrival hints at pursuit of some kind, holds him down. (The amputation scene takes place in blackout, thankfully, but Caleb’s agonized shriek blending into composer Michael Roth’s striking soundscape, is an effect that needs no visual image to be unnerving.)
As Caleb lies helpless and feverish, the dynamic among the three shifts. At first taking for granted Simon’s loyalty to his white Jewish “family,” Caleb learns otherwise. Simon, emerging from behind his lifetime mask of acceptance that survival had required, informs him without rancor that from now on, he expects to be asked, not told, to do something.
Angry, resentful, loudly claiming his liberation and openly suspicious of the reason for Caleb’s return, John flouts Simon’s disapproval, making risky thieving forays into neighboring houses that are motivated less by necessity than obsessive need.
His clothes become more and more refined (costume designer Angela Balogh Calin deftly defines each of the three characters), and his stolen goods — silver, fine china, clothes, furniture — pile up in the house. But this self-educated man, who educated other slaves in violation of the law and was sent more than once by Caleb’s father to the local “whipping man” for punishment, has only vague plans for the future, fueled by whiskey and a sense of desperation.
A makeshift Passover Seder that Simon insists upon, despite the others’ reluctance, is a brief but significant coming together in shared faith, and in the ceremonial text telling of the Hebrew slaves’ journey to freedom, is an affirmation.
The resonance for past and present in Lopez’s play is a given; and Benson’s fine cast does it full justice. Robinson, an impressive presence who was the patriarchal figure in the 2012 SCR/Pasadena Playhouse production of August Wilson’s “Jitney” (the two theaters’ first collaboration), plays Simon as a man discovering his strength and authority in the shedding of a self-protective, subservient past.
As John, Smith brings nuance and a nearly febrile tension to the role, revealing a tragic figure replacing the bonds of slavery with something unseen but just as binding. Hunter brings a certain poignancy to the effect of Caleb’s wounds on body and mind and his confusion in the new order of things that can have him professing his love for Simon’s daughter, Sarah — whom he has held in his mind as the symbol of “home” during his bloody years on the battlefield — while ignoring the stark reality that she is his property, without freedom of choice. (Lopez gives Caleb one small gesture, repeated throughout the play, to serve as a signpost for what might come.)
In the end, as Lopez uses the revelation of old and new secrets effectively, if not unpredictably, some connections deepen, others are severed and all three men face a future irrevocably changed.
What: “The Whipping Man”
Where: Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday. Ends March 1.
Admission: $30 to $75; premium seating, $125.
More info: (626) 356-7529, www.pasadenaplayhouse.org
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LYNNE HEFFLEY writers about theater and culture for Marquee.