Baggage weighs heavier and heavier, even after it’s opened and airing, in Mfoniso Udofia’s complex, involving “Her Portmanteau,” at New Brunswick’s George Street Playhouse through October 30.
Udofia, abetted by uniformly excellent acting from Shannon Harris, Mattilyn Rochester Kravitz, and Jennean Farmer, as well as pinpoint direction from Laiona Michelle, introduces us to a mother (Kravitz) and two daughters whose lives are affected by more than usually difficult choices, some made decades before “Her Portmanteau’s” action. One was the mother’s physical abandonment of one daughter following a failed marriage that left the mother and her eldest child (Harris) oceans apart and rarely in touch.
When the two reunite, arising conflicts take such a strong psychological and emotional course it’s difficult to see a resolution that can come close to satisfying either character or the better-adjusted daughter/sister (Farmer), who hovers between being an active participant and enlightened observer in the drama Udofia unfolds.
Situational events exacerbate long-standing wounds and regrets, and family dynamics, complicated by mores from two different cultures, give “Her Portmanteau” unending texture that plays with audience allegiances and keeps attention rooted to the stage lest a detail be missed.
While Udofia withholds some key information to maintain tension and springs a major surprise to get to ‘Her Portmanteau’s” denouement, her play constantly gathers steam, keeps one listening for answers, and covers massive dramatic ground that turns one family’s troubles into a recognizable universal picture that can reflect many families.
So many issues are broached, “Her Portmanteau” triggers thought and makes one consider not only the pain, often unintentional or exaggerated, we may have caused to someone close to us but also the choices we make for our self-preservation no matter the fallout to others.
Michelle’s intelligent, emotionally attuned production brings all Udofia raises compellingly to the George Street stage. The director and her cast concentrate on reality. While taste or diplomacy come into play, none of Udofia’s characters flinch or hesitate when it comes time to unleash a strong feeling or justify a past action.
Harris, Kravitz, and Farmer keep everything they say and do so human, they create a balance between tension and relief, between upheaval and calm that makes Michelle’s production feels as if it’s happening in real time and taking the only course it can. “Her Portmanteau” could be the next play George Street successfully transfers to off-Broadway or persuades other regional companies to produce.
The play and production begin on an edgy note. Harris’s Ini comes to the United States from Nigeria to be with the mother who stayed in America while she and her father went to live in the parents’ native Africa. Ini is miffed about waiting for longer than expected at an airport and angry that the sister she barely knows picks her up instead of the mother, who is also a virtual stranger. She is also disappointed she lands in her sister’s New York apartment when she expects to be ensconced in a large Massachusetts home to which she can eventually bring the son she left in Nigeria.
The frost Harris creates as she conveys Ini’s temperamental irritation is so palpable, it informs everything, even to the point of making the entire theater, audience and all, uncomfortable and waiting for a barely secure cork to blow into a fit of displeasure and accusation.
Harris makes Ini seem intolerant and unbending. She is resistant to both the confused but earnest cheeriness of her sister and the appeals of her finally-arriving mother to thaw.
Through Harris, the audience meets a character who will be tough to contend with. Ini’s seemingly innate unpleasantness looks as if it’s going to dominate the play and the entire atmosphere in the theater. This opening has long-lasting effect, and there’s always an expectation that Ini will become annoyed or resentful and retreat once more into her intransigent self.
Part of Ini’s attitude is psychological. She feels as if she is always being deceived or frustrated by the mother who left her at a Houston airport 36 years earlier. Part of it is cultural. African tradition bestows a lot of authority on a family’s eldest daughter. Ini wants this deference, especially from her sister, Adiaha, 32, whom she feels has usurped her place in the family pecking order. That is because Adiaha is the eldest daughter of the three children her mother had with another man after Ini and her father left. It doesn’t help that “Adiaha” means eldest daughter in the Nigerian dialect Ini and her mother speak. This conflict regarding which sister rules which roost continues throughout “Her Portmanteau.”
We come to understand Ini, her mother, and her sister as the title’s implied baggage is unpacked, at one point literally. The mother, Abasiama, is especially riddled with a personal history that includes tons of guilt but also objectives that led to hard but pragmatic decisions she made while considering the needs of a moment and without looking back. An actual suitcase with an important place in family history also has a role in getting to the heart of “Her Portmanteau.”
Harris has amazing discipline as Ini. When Harris turns icy, the entire George Street auditorium chills.
The chip Harris carries on Ini’s shoulder becomes almost visible via the angry expression, complete with hard, withering glare, stiff posture, and intractable attitude with which Harris endows her character. It is stunning when Ini lightens up some, a shock of a relieving kind when you hear her laughing with Adiaha as they return from a walk to a neighborhood bodega. Harris’s is a complete performance that covers and conveys the huge range of emotion, hauteur, and need Ini has to express.
Mattilyn Rochester Kravitz is another who runs a vast gamut of sentiments as Abasiama exudes everything from joy at being with her two older girls to guilt as how she affected Ini’s life.
Kravitz is the model of sincerity, even when Abasiama fumbles or satisfies herself with evasions or half-truths while working to confront regrets and guilt tempered by the necessity, actual life situations, that triggered them. She can be warmly maternal and movingly conciliatory, then become as diamond-hard as Ini when a concession she doesn’t want to make, or can’t make because of a mentally ill second husband, is requested.
Reality is the hallmark of all the actresses’ work, as well as Michelle’s production, but Kravitz uses it the most broadly and most affectingly as a woman who invites sympathy by making logical justifications and who might be dying inside from a long-anticipated reunion unfolding in a way she doesn’t expect, intend, or enjoy.
Jennean Farmer charmingly aces a tough role in which Adiaha’s American penchant for friendliness and contented demeanor is challenged by Ini’s prickliness and things she is learning about her mother for the first time. Farmer exudes the 30-something who has figured out who she is, launched herself in life, and is taken aback by this flinty, disapproving sister who doesn’t seem to want to come to a peaceful or reasonable compromise.
Shoka Kambara has designed a neatly livable New York apartment. Gregory J. Horton’s costumes perfectly convey each character. Inza Bamba’s music enhances the mood of the play. And Cheyenne Sykes’s lighting emphasized the opening of baggage with its brightness.
Her Portmanteau, George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, 11 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick. Wednesday through Saturday, 8 p.m., and Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, 2 p.m. $25 to $70. Call 732-246-7717 or visit the website at georgestreetplayhouse.org.
