Southbound

By T.E.K.

HOME by Samm-Art Williams

This play is a rite of passage, a picaresque odyssey of a man who moves from his bucolic farm in Cross Roads, N.C., to jail and to a big Northern city where the demonic "subway rolls, the sub way rolls," and after 13 years comes back home to the fragrant land of his first sweet memories and desires.

Cephus Miles, a black man (Charles Brown), loves his farm. The plowing, the planting, the harvesting form the serene inner rhythm of his life. Through good times and bad, Cephus' jovial imperturbability, his native resilience and his purity of spirit form the core of this warm drama. Originally presented by the Negro Ensemble Company at St. Mark's Play house in Greenwich Village and currently housed at Broadway's Cort Theater, Home explores the texture of the black experience from the inside looking out with some rue but no hostility.

There are only three actors in the play, but many characters. Cephus is attended by Woman One and Woman Two, who multiply themselves in various roles throughout the evening. Woman One (L. Scott Caldwell) is Cephus' conscience, and principally his childhood sweetheart Pattie Mae. Jailed for refusing to fight in Viet Nam, Cephus loses his farm for back taxes. He gravitates to Woman Two (Michele Shay), a big-city temptress. The city shatters Cephus' moral gyroscope and drives him to drink and drugs, but in a finale that O. Henry might have relished, he gets to go back home again.

The cast leaves nothing to be desired, and Playwright Williams is a prose poet with a lavish sense of humor and such musically evocative imagery that one may leave the theater with the lines of When It's Sleepy Time Down South running through one's mind.

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