Detention is a drag. For the students in ‘Exception to the rule’ it is also symbolic. Whatever landed them in the after-school carnage, these teens had already been captured by forces far beyond their control.
They enter one after another, their voices echoing around the Black Box Theater, where the Roundabout Underground production opened on Wednesday night. In a space no bigger than a classroom, the audience, seated on three sides, is within spitball distance of the bickering, attitude and revelations of what lies beneath.
There is Mikayla (Amandla Jahava), who objects to her reputation as a naughty girl while enjoying the attention; the goofball Tommy (Malik Childs), who claims he’s “not tryna holla” with Mikayla while clearly taking his chance; Abdul (Mister Fitzgerald), who seems guarded and pensive and prefers to keep his head down; Dayrin (Toney Goins), who is short-tempered but loves to laugh; and the sweet but sour Dasani (Claudia Logan), which Dayrin mockingly calls Aquafina (as in the other brand of bottled water).
Then there’s Erika (MaYaa Boateng), otherwise known as “school-bound Erika,” whose late arrival comes as a shock to the couple. Upwardly mobile and buttoned up, she is what Dayrin calls “the whitest person in a room full of black people.” What could she have done wrong? And where is the teacher anyway? They can’t go home until he writes them out.
As for the show’s conceit, the playwright, Dave Harris, borrows from both “Waiting for Godot” and John Hughes’ classic portrait of detained and misunderstood youth, “The Breakfast Club.” It’s doubtful that the students’ savior will ever come, and as they discover what they stand for, and what that says about their stations in life, the story propels forward. Throw in a few romantic sparks between opposites, and it’s all a little too familiar.
But what at first glance seems like an everyday exercise in corrective discipline turns into something sinister. The PA system begins to falter, no one can see the time, and bars slide across the window as the school shuts down after hours (sound is by Lee Kinney). Remove the desks, and the planed cinder block floors and walls might as well be a prison setting (set by Reid Thompson and Kamil James). And the flickering of fluorescent lights and the red glow of the hall suggest some kind of purgatory (lights are from Cha See).
As the kids clash and open up to each other, surreal elements creep up, which seem to represent the systems and obstacles—poverty, redlining, over-policing—that can trap many black people in rooms like this, and worse. And the students’ backstories illustrate how they try to maneuver against such repression: Dasani has stolen food because she is hungry; Mikayla was forced to make her own short skirt. (“Do you think I have money for all that extra fabric? I look sexy on a budget.”)
Led by Miranda Haymon, the performances have an exaggerated quality that keeps the characters at a distance, despite the action being in your face. Each has subtler, more grounded moments, but their personas have a heightened sense of being stand-ins for broader ideas. Like the equally keeled Erika, Boateng has an almost mechanical, doll-like carriage that evokes the concept of what it takes to escape social constraints rather than someone with one foot out the door.
As in his previous work ‘Tambo & Bones’, Harris plays with stereotypes about Blackness to turn them inside out and point out the history, circumstances and motivations behind ways of thinking and behavior. It is an exercise conducted for the benefit of the public believed to be in need of instruction, and for some it will no doubt be an eye opening lesson.
But there is a restlessness inherent in any time-out in the classroom, and in theatergoers who are positioned as learners. What happens if we can see people for who they are and then dig deeper into their contradictions? Understanding how lives are shaped by their limitations, as Harris describes here with ultimate logic, is fundamental to social justice. But to see that there’s more to people than what keeps them in the margins, maybe we should release them first.
Exception to the rule
Until June 26 at the Black Box Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, Manhattan; roundabouttheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
