Charles Fuller’s “A Soldier’s Play,” a dynamic drama if ever there was one, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1982 but did not appear on Broadway until 2020 because, at least in Fuller’s telling, the playwright refused to change his final line at producers’ demands.
The line in question? “You’ll have to get used to Black people being in charge.”
So there was something apt about the opening of the national tour of “A Soldier’s Play” in Chicago on a night when the city elected its third Black mayor, Brandon Johnson, whose election victory became apparent just as this drama at Broadway in Chicago’s CIBC Theatre reached intermission. Fuller, who died last fall at the age of 83, would surely have appreciated that synchronicity.
Happily, the writer did live long enough to witness director Kenny Leon’s stellar Roundabout Theatre production — the one now touring after pandemic delays with an excellent, Equity cast — win the Tony Award for best revival at the ceremony in 2021, some 40 years after Fuller wrote it.
“A Soldier’s Play” is one of the best American dramas of the latter half of the 20th century. Set on a military base in Fort Neal, Louisiana, in 1944, the play follows a company of “colored” troops who await European action while trying to stay alive in hostile territory at home. Fuller was one of the very few American playwrights with a military background and he used that background to craft a piece that very much feels born of actual experience.
But “A Soldier’s Play,” which explores the murder of a notoriously tough Black sergeant just outside the base, is also structured as a procedural. In essence, the audience follows along as a Black officer, played by Norm Lewis on this tour, tries to conduct an inquiry into the murder. Was he killed by local members of the Klan? Or members of his company? Or racist white officers? The gripping, fast-moving whodunit moves backward and forward in time as it keeps you guessing throughout.
But unlike most thrillers, a genre often reliant on stereotypes, “A Soldier’s Play” also ripples with societal import.
It’s also a cry of anguish over the obstacles faced by Black soldiers in the 1940s, patriotic Americans forced to deal with the racism of many of their compatriots even as they were expected to potentially lay down their lives in the theater of war. It explores self-doubt, self-hatred and the capacity of Americans to change and it does so with a rich understanding of the complexity of race in the military and, by extension, of the nation as a whole. Few of its observations are polemical but almost all are born in pain. It’s a play that was missed by many in the 1980s and this production offers a chance to catch some of the best work to date from f Leon, America’s leading Black stage director, a deeply experienced artist who has worked often in Chicago.
The richness of this work is born, I think, of Fuller’s own history and also of his extraordinary talent. Aside from Lewis, the production also features a superb ensemble of actors, including the veteran actor Eugene Lee. Lee’s fearless portrait of a man whose justifiably embittered dogmatism rips several human beings apart is truly an extraordinary piece of acting. You can also see the young actor Sheldon D. Brown, who so impressed Steppenwolf Theatre audiences in “Choir Boy,” once again doing very fine and fearless work as a private who deserves no part of his fate.
I reviewed this show in New York with a different cast. I like both companies for slightly different reasons, but with equal enthusiasm. Touring plays are rare these days; this one is not to be missed.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “A Soldier’s Play” (4 stars)
When: Through April 16
Where: CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St.
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Tickets: $35-105 at 800-775-2000 and www.broadwayinchicago.com
