Suzan-Lori Parks chronicles odyssey of ex-slave in ‘Father’ play

With her latest play, Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3), playwright Suzan-Lori Parks presents the first segment of a three-part epic based on the Civil War and the fortunes of a slave who comes to claim his freedom.

Jointly presented by the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge and the Public Theater in New York City, which premiered the play in October, a riveting production of the play is on stage at the Loeb Drama Center in Harvard Square through March 1.

Extending from the Civil War era to the 21st century, the play loosely adopts elements of a classic Greek poem, Homer’s Odyssey, which follows the hero Ulysses as he makes his perilous 10-year journey home to Greece after the Trojan War.

Parks is not the first playwright to craft an epic rendering of African American life. Fellow Pulitzer Prize recipient August Wilson (1945-2005) spanned every decade of the 20th century with his 10-play cycle. Like Wilson, Parks employs humor and everyday language to express the burdens, triumphs and aspirations of her characters.

But with captivating humor and relentless honesty, Parks moves into new territory as a playwright. Like female visual artists of her generation—Carrie Mae Weems, Kara Walker and Lorna Simpson—she is an African American exploring racism as it warps whites as well as people of color.

Staged by the same team that developed its New York premier, the production is directed by Jo Bonney with sets by Neil Patel, lighting by Lap Chi Chu, and costumes by Esosa.

Bonney and her fine ensemble of actors share profound respect for the playwright’s unique and powerful voice and bring to life her inventive characters and the hard truths they bring forth. Although running almost three hours with one intermission, the production is both deeply engaging and entertaining,

The play’s ambitions are grand, but its staging is intimate, opening with a spotlight on a lone guitarist in a pork pie hat, Steven Bargonetti, one of six actors from the original production. As the play begins, he combines his blues-inflected fretwork with songs by Parks that echo phrases spoken by the characters on stage.

The uncluttered set consists of a small cabin surrounded by a few stools. Behind it is an artfully lit ramp that lets characters come and go as if crossing a great distance.

In this production, props are as eloquent as words: a Confederate soldier’s jacket, a Union officer’s coat, a whip, a white ostrich plume from an officer’s hat become laden with a character’s identity and power or lack thereof.

From humorous to surreal

The first of the play’s three parts, entitled A Measure of a Man, unfolds in the spring of 1862, on a modest plantation in Texas. The Civil War has already been underway for a year, but it is only beginning to touch the lives of slaves on this rural farm.

Here, Parks introduces one of her marvelous inventions, a nameless quartet of Less Than Desirable Slaves, performed with glee by Charlie Hudson, III, and from the New York production, Julian Rozzell Jr., Tonye Patano and Jacob Ming-Trent. As they place bets on whether or not their fellow slave Hero will follow his master, the Colonel, into the Rebel Army, their back-and-forth injects the poetic, semi-sung form of an epic with the cadence of street talk. Rich in rhythmic repetition, their exchanges echo ordinary words with extraordinary meaning as they debate Hero’s “little crumb of a choice:” to remain a slave on the Colonel’s farm or become his valet-in-arms.

Here and in the third part, this group is also like a Greek chorus, observing, approving or disapproving of the actions of the main characters.

Like Homer’s Ulysses, Hero has a faithful canine friend; but Hero’s Odyssey Dog has gone away and nobody can find him. Just as Homer’s protagonist has a faithful wife, Penelope, who awaits his return, Hero has a loyal mate, Penny, who begs him to stay behind.

The playwright’s sense of humor seldom extends to the sober and wordy Hero, performed by the handsome Benton Greene. However, she endows a note of hysteria to Penny, deftly performed by Jenny Jules, who originated the role in New York.

Their trusted friend is solid and sensible Homer (Sekou Laidlow), a slave whose foot was cut by captors as punishment for trying to escape, and who would otherwise try again.

Wielding a surreal touch, Parks lets her characters be themselves and also archetypes of something more. Parks invents an articulate dog and a depraved white master who demonstrates the toxicity of racism, and she creates a revelatory dialogue between Hero and a mixed-race soldier who passes as white on measuring the worth of a man.

Hero’s journey

The second part, A Battle in the Wilderness, unfolds a few months later in a forest clearing somewhere in the South.

Hero waits on the Colonel, played with fierce energy by Ken Marks, from the New York production. Nearby in a wooden cage more suited to a dog is a captive Union Army soldier, Smith, performed with effective restraint by Michael Crane.

Marks superbly conjures the Colonel, a creation right out of a mid-century absurdist comedy. He is officious, smiling and seductive and only gradually reveals his madness. Like Pozzo, the whip-cracking fop and slave owner in Samuel Beckett’s 1953 masterpiece, Waiting for Godot, the Colonel struts in style when not menacing Hero and his prisoner with his pistol. He is fond of the white ostrich plume on his officer’s hat, a symbol of racial superiority in all its folly.

Although the Colonel’s time on stage goes on too long—once we grasp his character, it becomes tedious to watch him—this is no fault of Marks, who makes the most of the Colonel’s extremes and such memorable lines as, “I’m grateful every day that God made me white.”

“Sure thing, Peacock,” is what Hero thinks, but does not say, when the Colonel gives him an order. He confesses this to the captive Smith as the two launch a riveting, revelatory dialogue. The two trade views on how a person gets to own himself. Hero shows Smith his brand as his form of identification and ponders how one can “steal” himself. You have to “steel yourself,” responds Smith.

The third part, The Union of My Confederate Parts, returns to the Texas plantation a year later. The war will continue for two more bloody years; but the Emancipation Proclamation has freed slaves, if only on paper.

Illiterate, isolated and unaware that in the eyes of the law they are free is a trio of Runaway Slaves—again the irresistible Hudson, Rozzell, Patano. They find refuge at the cabin, where Penny doles out copious food but resists their entreaty that she depart with them to freedom in Ohio.

Homer has become Penny’s ardent suitor. Yet she is divided, pulled by fidelity to Hero and her hope of his return. She is overjoyed by the surprise arrival of another champion of fidelity, Odyssey Dog. Brought to life by the amazing Ming-Trent, who originated the role, Odyssey Dog speaks core truths but is utterly doglike in his sweating, panting body.

In contrast, Hero, who has now renamed himself Ulysses, speaks in an arch, formal voice. Parks lets him become a bit tedious and become, for now, a rigid character like the Colonel.

In the final moment of the play, a downcast Ulysses, left behind by the others, sits with news of the Emancipation Proclamation in his hand and Odyssey Dog by his side. He won’t go too far wrong with such a companion.

We want to follow their journey and await the second installment in this epic by Parks, and what more it stirs us to think about ourselves as Americans and our shared legacy of slavery, racism and democracy. Whoever we are and whatever the color of our skin, this is our journey too.