Buzzer

I went to see the play Buzzer last night at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and I thought the play was okay. The performances by the three lead actors were good, but I felt like there was something missing overall. The play focused on an interracial couple (a black man named Jackson and a white woman named Suzy) and the black man's white friend, Don. Jackson and Suzy move into a slowly gentrifying area of New York (although the specific area is not identified) and Don shows up needing a place to stay as he tries to rehab off of drugs and alcohol. Things go seriously awry when Don and Suzy fool around with each other behind Jackson's back and Suzy admits to Don that she doesn't like living in the ghetto area that Jackson is so keen on even though she lies to Jackson's face and makes him believe that she loves living there.

The gentrification aspect of the story didn't interest me as much as the racial dynamics. There is an immediate level of intimacy and familiarity between Don and Suzy that doesn't exist with either of them in relation to Jackson. The two white characters bond over their whiteness and Jackson ends up being the odd man out. It was amazing to me how clueless Jackson was about the situation festering between his wife and his friend in his own home. Or maybe he wasn't clueless and just chose to ignore what was going on. I like to see plays that push beyond the racial boundaries we normally see (a minority being discriminated against, white liberal guilt, etc.). This play does have some of those aspects, but it didn't dwell on them. Interestingly, there was an interracial couple (white woman, black man) seated next to me at the theater and I heard the woman tell the man the play wasn't really about race, but about relationships. I think it was about both, but the racial dynamics were never not present in every part of this play.