Theater Review—

‘No Child Left Behind’ A Winner In Hartford

By Julie Stern

HARTFORD — We saw something wonderful earlier this month, worth a foray up to Hartford in the middle of the Labor Day weekend. Originally conceived and performed as a one-woman show by playwright Nilaja Sun, No Child Left Behind  recounts the attempt by a visiting “teaching artist” to cajole a class of underachieving losers in an inner city Bronx high school into performing a serious play.

In its award winning Off Broadway debut, Ms Sun — who spent eight years as a teaching artist in the city schools herself — played all of the dozens of people who inhabit  the building, from teachers and students to security guard, janitor, principal et al.

At Theaterworks Hartford, director Rob Ruggiero has recast the show, with Donnetta Lavinia Grays as Ms Sun, and a trio of top-notch actors — Lizan Mitchell, Portia, and Anthony Mark Stockard  —each playing “various characters” (which means instantaneous changes of age, gender, ethnicity, accent and attitude).

As narrated by the elderly janitor, who has worked at Malcolm X High School since 1960 — back when all the kids were Italian and the school was called Robert Moses High, and he was the first black member of the custodial staff — the story revolves around a particularly disruptive tenth grade class, currently demoralizing their sixth English teacher of the year.

Into this picture bursts Ms Sun, hired to fill an eight-week stint as visiting artist, thanks to an $8,000 cultural grant, applied for by the school’s principal. Wide eyed and eager, she needs this gig to pay her back rent, but, as a product of the Bronx herself, she really wants to work with these kids, to do something for her people.

Her plan is to have the class read, analyze and then stage Timberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 drama, Our Country’s Good. It seems an odd choice. Set in the 18th Century, and based on a novel by Thomas Keneally, it recounts how the first governor general of the British penal colony in Australia attempted to use art to edify the lives of the convicts under his jurisdiction. He ordered a hapless young Marine Lieutenant to have the prisoners, male and female, put on a play. The particular one he chose was one that happened to be a hit on the London Stage at that time: George Farquarhar’s restoration comedy The Recruiting Officer.

In a world marked by starvation, beatings and total social isolation, persuading the violent, brutish and frequently illiterate convicts to participate in something as far removed from their own experience as a restoration comedy, seemed a Sisyphean task. However, it becomes a vehicle for discussion of many important issues — the nature of justice, the possibility of redemption, the value of art, and the transforming power of working together to make something beautiful.

Once you start to think about it, the thematic connection becomes clear. Just as the convicts came from the bottom rung of the English social  ladder, shipped to the other side of the world so that their country could be rid of them, so these tenth graders, caged in a school dominated by metal detectors and contemptuous security guards, have been written off by society at large. While lip service is paid to “preparing” them for the standardized tests they will most likely never pass, the general expectation is that most of them will end up in prison, or dead.

As in Wertenbaker’s  play, the dramatic tension lies in wondering whether Ms Sun will possibly be able to pull it off and succeed, while as in works like Sarah Jones’ Bridge and Tunnel, or Anna Deveare Smith’s Fires in the Mirror, the entertainment comes from watching gifted actors transform themselves before you eyes into a wide variety of characters: the students having fun being rude, loud, obnoxious, and truculent, the school staff being by turns abusive, angry, desperate, and kind.

Like the convicts, the students eventually begin to form tentative bonds and learn a little about trust, even as Ms Sun realizes the enormity of the obstacles they face. Eight weeks of artistic enrichment will not overcome all the ravages of poverty, drugs, gang violence and abuse, but it does offer a glimmer of hope and possibility.

The title of the play is an ironic reference to the Administration’s education policy that has seen enrichment programs like this one sacrificed on the altar of multiple choice tests.

Brian Prather’s set design is perfect. I recognize that school with its dreary institutional cinderblock walls,  dangling light fixtures and shattered glass transoms. Everything about the production is excellent. The show is by turns hilarious, gripping, and ultimately deeply moving. Playwright Sun deserves all the awards she garnered for it, and Ruggiero’s direction keeps it an absolute winner.

(Performances have been extended to October 12. Call 860-527-7838 or visit TheaterWorksHartford.org for details.)