Transplant Richard Wright’s “Native Son” to today and one will find much more to retain than to update.
In “Hypocrisy of Justice: Sights and Sounds from the Black Metropolis,” however — composer-drummer Dana Hall and writer-director Cheryl Lynn Bruce’s musical-theatrical riff on the 1940 novel — faithfulness isn’t the M.O. The creative team instead takes Wright’s story as a starting point, a travel guide to the double-binds of Black American life.
“Hypocrisy’s” treatment of “Native Son” more than allows the suite to step into its own as a stand-alone work, eschewing plot but nonetheless invoking Wright’s balance between Bigger Thomas’s interior and exterior worlds. “Hypocrisy’s” narrator, played by actor Malcom Banks (“Chicago P.D.,” Youngblood in Congo Square’s 2018 “Jitney”), is Bigger Thomas, but, as Bruce’s script reminds throughout, he’s one of many Biggers, trying to navigate daily life in the shadow of high-profile, dignity-less deaths of other Black men and women.
As Hall explained in his program notes, today’s “Hypocrisy of Justice” is now almost unrecognizable from the version that premiered at Symphony Center in 2015. The new “Hypocrisy,” the hub of two days’ worth of programming at the University of Chicago’s Logan Center for the Arts, augments the narration and re-scores Hall’s music, with brand-new material for a tighter ensemble.
And whew, what an ensemble. Trumpeter Marquis Hill and John Wojciechowski — on saxes and flute — nobly and anthemically carried Hall’s choruses when they appeared, Wojciechowski especially staggering with a restlessly modulating solo near work’s center. Cellist Tomeka Reid and bassist Clark Sommers were something of another unit, often holding down the same section of the tunes, whether melody, harmony or rhythm. But Hall’s score gave them plenty of chances to split off from one another in miraculous, fingerboard-spanning solos. Hall himself led from the rear of the proverbial bandstand, counting off the epic evening work with a heartbeat-like cue.
Hall is always a revelation to hear live, but it felt like a particular privilege on Saturday to hear him drive his own composition. Witnessing Hall play is what I imagine it would be like to watch words float into the mind of a great poet — that’s what great improvisation is, isn’t it? — but Hall has a special way of physicalizing his inspiration, his strokes supple, easy, just as powerful whether he’s striking the drum inches from the head or winding up in a graceful arc.
More Top Picks Best Beach Umbrellas
Hall’s performance also struck at something essential and nearly missable, if you took the performance at face value: Yes, there is joy in “Hypocrisy of Justice.” Last weekend’s version might be darker than Symphony Center’s 2015 iteration, but in rejecting hollow hopes it also waves off reductive narratives of Black doom and gloom. In “Hypocrisy’s” most galvanic moments, Hall beamed gleefully at Sommers, swapping glances like goofballs in the back of a classroom. It was as if he delighted in the ways his comrades could improvise their way out of any corner. “Native Son” was the road map, resourcefulness the gasoline.
Banks was a strong suture between music and text, deploying his poetry slam-and-spoken word-inspired delivery like the sixth member of the onstage sextet. But Banks wasn’t exactly subtle, either — he seemed to have two modes, Intense and Thoughtful, with little mezzo area between the two.
Then again, he wasn’t working with Bruce at her best. In comparison to Wright’s Bigger, “Hypocrisy’s” narrator seems to be almost omnisciently clear-eyed. His moral compass is unerring and sometimes heavy-handed. Even one of the script’s highlights, a bitter and biting rumination on how even Black excellence cannot save Black lives (“When the sun goes down / those degrees shrivel up to the size of some peas”), loses some of its impact in Bruce’s rigid rhyming scheme. Sure, Wright’s novel is only the motif undergirding the work. Even so, a more conflicted, nuanced narrator might give Bruce’s script longer legs.
The most provocative section of Bruce’s script comes at the very end, in which Banks’ “Bigger” posits a vision of Black self-empowerment a la Frantz Fanon and Marcus Garvey. It’s one of Bruce’s most powerful punches, but the current version rinses it down with a long instrumental outro that feels more like a cooldown than a coda. Personally, I wish Bruce’s words had been permitted to hang in the air.
Sadly, the venerable Kerry James Marshall, originally slated to contribute visual designs as he had the 2015 version, had to bow out of this “Hypocrisy” for undisclosed reasons. The Logan Center’s lighting design was nonetheless agile and entrancing, enthroning musicians with gorgeous latticed spotlights during their solos.
A drag, then, that the Logan’s sound design was as disappointing as the lighting was dazzling. Initial leveling issues between ensemble and actor took a few too many beats to right, briefly overwhelming the theater with sound, and the miking of the band sometimes didn’t seem to capture the timbral fullness of Hill’s and Wojciechowski’s horns. Canned sound was likewise 2D and abrasive. (See: the alarm clock that, in both book and adaptation, opens Bigger’s story.)
None of the above criticisms should be considered unscrubbable stains on Hall and Bruce’s otherwise humbling work — not even close. Even if “Hypocrisy” had not been staged before, it demands to be heard as a living, ever-evolving work.
Let’s hope it is again soon.
Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.
The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism helps fund our classical music coverage. The baiduhai maintains editorial control over assignments and content.