By Alan R. Hall, Front Row Center, http://hometown.aol.com/theonlyarhall/

The Line Between Truth and Untruth Blurs Quickly in Tracey Scott Wilson's The Story.

RALEIGH - There are a lot of converging lines that meet at the center of the work that closed this past weekend at Raleigh Little Theatre. For their second play of the season, RLT chose the work The Story, which is, basically, about an ambitious newspaperwoman and the risks she is willing to take to get ahead in her profession. But that is the simplest of synopses; there is far more at work in “The Story” than that simple statement could ever cover.

Tracey Scott Wilson, using the backdrop of a newspaper office and a cast of nine, spins a tale that starts with a senseless killing, and ends with a senseless accusation. During the play, a number of people who work at this paper, named simply “The Daily,” make attempts to solve the murder mystery, but they are all doing so at their own agendas. The murder has at its heart a racial issue, for it is a white volunteer teacher killed in a black area of town, supposedly by a black man (if the dead man’s wife is to be believed), and every writer on the staff would like the scoop if he thought he could get it.

But what we find when we meet the characters working at the Daily is a company divided; and it is sharply along racial lines. The newly-hired writer for the paper starts today; she is only the third black individual to be hired at the paper ever. We find that she might possibly have gotten her position through less-than-positive means; she is, as we meet them, the romantic interest of one of the white men in the upper echelon of the paper. Yvonne Robinson (Chaunesti N. Lyon) is a modern woman, and it shows; at one point in the play she reveals to Jeff Morgan, her lover (Scott Nagel), that she was never really accepted by her peers because she always acted “too white.” From Boston, Yvonne has no ebonic accent; and even though she has been hired to work with the “Outlook” section of the paper, she is far from accepted by the two strongest members of that group: section editor Pat Johnson (Jackie Marriott) and her lead reporter, Neil Petterson (George Hill), the only other blacks on the paper.

Wilson uses this central quartet along with another pair of supporting actors and a trio of chorus members, whose roles are constantly changing. The two other characters we meet are Jessica Dunn, the wife of the man killed (Izzy Burger); and Latisha (Stacie Alston), a rather precocious teen from one of the youth centers that dot the city. The three ensemble players are Lauren Reese, Starr Kilgore, and Courtney Hooks. They play roles from police officers to reporters to the women who struggle to keep the youth centers open in the face of mounting opposition.

But what Yvonne is struggling against is the wall that goes up between her and the team of Johnson and Petterson. To fight it, she attempts to go over their heads; she decides she is going to solve this mystery of who killed Tim Dunn, and if Outlook will not take her story, then Metro or National will. This automatically sets her up as an adversary to the Outlook team, and even though they would normally be considered three peas from the same pod, Johnson and Petterson are determined to keep her down and, if at all possible, out.

The set on which this play is presented is of varying shades of gray, from the granite of the edifice of the paper to the cubicles of the reporters, and the streets on which a lot of the action takes place. The front of the Daily is an imposing structure; but it is also the entry to any building that is required, from the police station to the aforementioned youth centers, and even to the home of Jessica Dunn. The implication that there is no black or white here is obvious. But as things progress and more and more lines begin to converge, we become aware that there is no truth or lies here, either; simply interpretation.

Yvonne meets the young girl who calls herself Latisha at one of the youth centers that her editor, Johnson, keeps sending her to; she immediately is drawn to the youth. Latisha is extremely well-educated. She speaks four languages, has spent time in preparatory school, knows as much about her environment as anyone, and seems intent on making an impression on Yvonne.

Petterson has been taking his own approach to the Dunn case, believing that in the death of one member of a couple, the other is always suspect. Wishing specifically to turn the eyes of the city away from a pre-suspicion of a black youth, he attempts to build a case against Jessica, but it falls far too short on facts. Meanwhile, the police are at a loss, and Jessica spends her days watching the newscasts, as reporter after reporter tells her there are no new leads in the case. But for reasons we can only surmise, Latisha calls Yvonne at the paper, and tells her she has information that will help Yvonne break the case. Yvonne goes immediately to hear it, and is shocked to hear Latisha confess to the crime, saying she is a member of a gang of girls that dress as boys to escape detection, and pull off crimes that get the neighborhood boys in serious trouble. Yvonne, hiding her source and using a fictitious name, tells Latisha’s story—all of it—in an exclusive for the Metro section of the paper, fulfilling her goal of getting past and beyond the clutches of her too-political editor.

The work is an ensemble piece, but the individual members must stand alone often. The strongest on-stage is Jackie Marriott as Johnson, the editor who “single-handedly” integrated the paper. She plays the villain of this work with relish, and a perfect understanding of where Johnson is coming from. Second would be Lyon, as the protagonist but also the foil of Marriott. The rest fall in line behind them, with varying degrees of acting success. Surprisingly weak in this play are the two men, Hill and Nagel, who have played much more difficult roles in the area with much more understanding. They are terribly one-dimensional, as if written that way. Yet their presence is essential; decisions they make shape the end of the play.

Hill’s Petterson decides to go down another path. He begins a background check on Yvonne. If he cannot prove his own theory, the least he can do is disprove hers. But what he finds shocks him; and it also shocks Jeff Morgan. With what appears to be vicious glee, Petterson tells Morgan that everything that Yvonne has told the paper about her past—and that includes everything she has told Morgan, as well—is a pack of lies. And when she is confronted with the information, she reveals to Morgan that she is “an invented individual,” designed to be what she should have been, rather than the failure she turned out to be. Morgan is enraged, and threatens to reveal her; but she says with this story she can withstand his attack. Morgan decides he is safer, and just as revenged, if he lets Johnson and Petterson destroy her, which he is sure they will. But Yvonne says that, regardless of any personal animosity, when confronted with a mutual enemy, the Race always closes ranks. She is wrong, of course; but what the Outlook duo decides is equally political, and equally ineffective; they will wait for the newspaper to get wind of the facts and dismiss her after a public investigation and humiliation.

And what, during this fiasco in Yvonne’s career, has become of Latisha? She has been identified from Yvonne’s story, and arrested. But she swears her innocence, and they cannot hold her. She then runs to Yvonne and tells her that the entire story was false; made up to impress this fancy black woman from the east. But what Latisha fails to understand is Yvonne’s cunning and indefatigable drive; if this story is proven to be false, it will not be by her. She will stick to her story, let Latisha say what she will. And when, in the final moments of the play, she is forced by a judge to reveal her source, Yvonne—the woman we so readily identified as the protagonist at the top of the show—unhesitatingly identifies Latisha as the girl who told her the “facts” surrounding the death of Tim Dunn. By this time, we know not who to believe; but we understand the implication of the identification. Without any evidence to the contrary, Latisha will be convicted of this crime. And Yvonne will continue to climb up the ladder at the paper, leaving her persecutors and her spurned lover in her wake.

This play is complex, asking questions we cannot begin to answer. The playwright asks these questions of her own race: how can we do this to each other? Is it so important to win in the “real world” that we forget our own roots, our own race? Why must we make enemies of those we should embrace? And how can any black individual sacrifice a black child’s life to better her own career?

The Story ran for three weekends in September, in the Gaddy-Goodwin Theatre on the RLT campus. RLT’s next presentation, “Moon Over Buffalo,” is a farcical piece of theatrical madness. The comedy runs on the Main Stage Oct. 7-23. For information and reservations, call RLT’s box office at 821-3111.

You are here: Home > Reviews and articles about the theatre's productions > The Story (Alan Hall)