"No Child..."

Theatre review
"No Child..." at the Hangar Theatre
Ithaca Times
June 25, 2008
727 words
"Stands, and delivers"

full text here

Stands, and delivers
By: Mark Tedeschi
06/25/2008

"No Child..." by Nilaja Sun. Directed by Wendy Dann. Starring Rachael Holmes. Scenic design by Kathryn Kawecki, costume design by Jennifer Caprio, lighting by Daniel Meeker, sound by Sarah Pickett.

Anyone who either teaches children or watches television knows by now that the No Child Left Behind Act has, in its current application, serious problems. Opponents of the act maintain that inner-city schools in particular face hurdles that only a restructuring or extensive reconsidering of the current education policy could address.

Until someone in the higher echelons takes action for change, all the rest can do is speculate and, for those more daring, gamble. In the Hangar Theatre's latest one-woman production, No Child..., the main character (Sun, named after the original award-winning Off Broadway show's writer and performer) takes a risk and tries a new technique to engage a diverse Bronx classroom of 10th grade students. While her efforts are commendable (and star Rachel Holmes's performance expert), the air of the show leaves behind a few important considerations.

Rachael Holmes fluidly bounces without a beat in and out of all of the show's 16 characters, including Janitor Baron (the play's de facto narrator), an uneasy Asian schoolteacher (Ms. Tam), a Jamaican security guard, the typical education-standards-concerned principal (Mrs. Kennedy), eight different students of various ethnic and social backgrounds, and Sun, the thirtysomething teaching artist who's brought in by Mrs. Kennedy to introduce the kids to theatre.

Sun chooses Our Country's Good, a 1988 play by Timberlake Wertenbaker, for its theme of theatre as a tool of motivation and elevation. As expected, the students act with defensive hesitation at first. Sun shows patience with assertion, and her presence and ideas seem all it takes to metamorphose the classroom - for example, she politely insists they refrain from using swear words; they comply, and if they slip, they instantly apologize.

The kids take to the new material. Their enthusiasm and participation build until the class gets a sudden replacement teacher whose strictness reawakens their antagonism. They lose interest and the frustrated Sun quits. Later, Janitor Baron dies in the story but continues narrating, ostensibly so the students and Sun can recommit and dedicate the play's performance to him (and writer Sun can make an Arthur Miller reference).

Holmes demonstrates a vast range of capability with her unassuming, consistent performance. Each of her characters has a physical tic (arms locked at the elbows, a tummy rub, a collar pull) and embodies a realistic vibe of youthful attitude.

Unfortunately, real kids aren't always that funny; repeatedly they jab at the similarity between "thespian" and "lesbian" and joyfully sing a Justin Timberlake tune when they hear the name of the guy who wrote the play they're to study. Holmes's most emotionally charged moment, though, comes in a conversation between Sun and Mrs. Kennedy regarding standards and the students' potential.

No Child... looks and sounds excellent, and at under 80 minutes, stays enjoyable and concise throughout. The lighting stands out in the show's bookending slow crawls and a montage-style sequence when the students perform the play (-within-a-play-within-a-play). The sparse, smart set contains a few of the grungy elements you'd expect to see in a city school: a scuffed floor, beat-up lockers, an old drinking fountain. And the quiet hum of kids' chattering between metal-detector squeals and school-bus rumbles keeps the focus on Holmes's acting.

Though it's engaging, No Child... is not without problems. It creates for itself a duplicitous identity crisis: the narrator suggests that change couldn't possibly come from one starry-eyed educator's influence, but without exaggeration, that's exactly what Sun supposedly accomplishes.

In the end, the idealism seems almost too optimistic, since the hasty epilogue (which includes a confusing joke about renaming the high school) itemizes the varied futures of several students without any further mention of their educational upbringing.

Were No Child... longer, it almost certainly would have benefited from more actors and fleshier parts for some of the characters who had to be reduced to a slurred lisp or bucked teeth. The issues plead for a deeper dig than such a short (if well-intentioned), one-person performance can realistically achieve. (HBO's "The Wire" spent an entire season on the difficulties of testing new methods in a city school.)

The strongest suggestion No Child... does make is that there are potentially effective alternatives - especially found in the arts - to standardization. Experimentation should be encouraged, albeit scrupulously. As Janitor Baron says, "Teaching is the hardest job in the whole wide world...they're underpaid, underappreciated, and underpaid." I can't help but agree with him there.


©Ithaca Times 2008