I cringed when I first read about the play Smart People, playing now at Capital Stage theater in Sacramento through July 24th. First the title, coupled with the promo phrase “It is the eve of Obama’s first election. Four of Harvard University’s brightest…” — the Obama and the Harvard’s brightest all seemed calculated to appeal to well-meaning white liberals and that didn’t seem to bode well. [I’m not going to explain why since I intend this to be a short piece]
Since we were going to see the play anyway (season tickets for over a decade) and I make it a rule not to read reviews or about a play before I see it, I didn’t research further. Other people seemed excited about it, so I sucked it up and went with my friends to the play.
In the end, possibly because of relatively low expectations and in spite of being a reluctant member of the target demographic, I ended up loving this production. I was riveted by the subject matter. I am fascinated by the subject of race and the brain. The 4 characters (called in the promo materials “a surgeon, an actress, a psychologist, and a neuro-psychiatrist”) are well-drawn. The way in which their lives begin to intersect is compelling. And despite the cutting edge mind-bending material, the play is laugh out loud funny and fast-paced and Cap Stage’s production does the writing justice–smart staging, versatile set, punchy actors.
Others in my group, while they enjoyed the experience found the play to be a bit self-consciously stagey and didactic. I do not disagree but when I read more afterwards about the (female African-American) playwright and what drove her to write it, I saw that, as I suspected, she is leaving nothing to chance. She wants people who don’t get this stuff to get this stuff.
Since I fancy myself and my friends some of the “smart people” (albeit not all ivy-educated) who get this stuff, I think we felt we didn’t need some of it quite so spelled out. But truth be told, even the spelling out is very clever.
I also found that the book Caste by Isabel Wilkerson earlier this year explains and underscores the need for more plays like these. I’ll write about Caste in a separate post but an understanding of the caste system in america shows how it can be true that even a white man can be brought down by threatening the system. And explaining trump’s rise in the wake of obama is central to why wilkerson wrote that book.
Anyway, see the play before July 24th–live theater is a treat. Go with friends and argue about it with them afterwards. Also a live treat. Note that Cap Stage requires proof of vaccination and also is back to requiring masks.
