‘Home’ Review: Broadway Stages A Loving And Captivating Tribute To The Late Samm-Art Williams In A Terrific Revival Of His Signature Work
06.06.2024 - 03:33
/ deadline.com
Forty-four years after Samm-Art Williams‘ wonderfully affecting Home first opened on Broadway (in a Tony nominated production), the playwright and his signature play were finally about to get a long-hoped-for Broadway revival from the Roundabout Theatre Company.
With the acclaimed director Kenny Leon at the helm and a three-actor cast that all but channels the author’s voice and the groundbreaking intensity and rhythms of his ’70s-era work for the Negro Ensemble Company, the revival promised to be a testament to the tenacity of the play and a well-deserved splash of late-career recognition for a once celebrated playwright who would become far better known for producing a trio of 1990s sitcoms (Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Martin).
Williams didn’t live to see the revival, dying peacefully in North Carolina last month at 78. Roundabout and Leon have kept their end of the bargain. Home opens tonight on Broadway at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre in a top-notch production that serves as a fitting and heartfelt tribute to the author.
Featuring a cast that couldn’t be better – Roundabout newcomers Tory Kittles, Brittany Inge and Stori Ayers – Home, after all these years away, remains a powerful depiction of a seemingly ordinary life in an extraordinarily cruel time and place: Cephus Miles is a Black, dirt-poor farmer in the Jim Crow South, his hopes for happiness wrapped up in a school sweetheart who’s about to go off to college. Life, as they say, does not go according to plan.
In the country scenes – Cephus later moves to New York City – the telling of this life story is played out on a sparse set gorgeously designed and beautifully lit to present a golden-hued depiction of a perhaps
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