Bourbon at the Border
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And yet, with all these strengths, the evening comes to an unsatisfying end. The problem seems to be a central one in serious theater: one person’s tragedy is often another’s melodrama. Someone betrayed in a marriage embraces Medea’s murderous revenge more readily than a person without that experience, who may consider all that shrieking and child slaughtering somewhat over-the-top. The leap of imaginative sympathy required of every audience member at every performance can be a hop or a high jump, depending on how close the auditor is to the characters and situation and on how much of a springboard the playwright provides.
So whether the climactic speech in Bourbon at the Border seems a bit much depends in part on how easily you can imagine that encounters with the law in America involve torture and rape meted out on the basis of race–which in turn depends largely on whether you’re black or white. Even whites fully prepared to concede the truth of the experience may resist iteration of the details, just as non-Jews who are far from Holocaust deniers nonetheless can think of ten thousand things they’d rather hear discussed. But for the culture to whom the tragedy happened, talking about it is both validating and healing.
Perhaps the pivotal speech is delivered at too high an emotional pitch, though if so it’s Dymond’s only directorial mistake. Velma Austin as May builds relentlessly from a mutter to a howl, ending with an accusatory “Where the fuck were you?” that can be heard on the next continent. Was there a way to present this speech quietly, so that its loathsome substance could slip into the audience’s undefended ear like the poison that killed Hamlet’s father? Or doesn’t it really matter how you administer poison?
