Cheryl L. West's Birdie Blue @ Seattle Rep

But strangely, we found that the minor, even tiny, flaws in the performances revealed something more troubling to us than Seattle-transplant Cheryl L. West's script. There were these little moments during the play when one actor or another would flub a vowel, screw up the accent or overly enunciate a word, reminding you that, of course, these three actors are classically trained, extremely talented and remarkably versatile. They don't actually talk like sassy or suave South Side Chicagoans. You just don't ever get to see black actors doing roles besides these, at least not on the Seattle stage. For all the theatre's perceived courage, our major regional theatres only ever trot out works like this (or August Wilson's almost as insufferable plays), for the requisite yearly or bi-yearly diversity show for which they have to bring in actors (both Sean Blake and Velma Austin are Chicago-based; Hall has a lengthy Seattle theatre resume) since, despite the fact Seattle has one of the largest theatre scenes in the nation, there's just not enough plays casting blacks to properly develop a career.

We recall attending a lecture by Amiri Baraka years ago at the University of Oregon where someone asked him if he thought we should have more color-blind casting. His response was that we needed to finally have color-conscious casting. His point wasn't that we should restrict non-white actors to specific roles narrowly tailored for them, but rather that casting minorities in non-minority-specific roles for the purpose of some sort of kumbaya-style diversity was as much a way not to talk about race in America as keeping them off the stage altogether. In an era where you'd be hard pressed to find a production of Shakespeare set in Elizabethan England, theatre directors are nevertheless extremely conservative when producing Modern and contemporary plays, giving undue deference to the playwright's message (who's usually white, of course) and rarely casting against type and having the guts to explore what that choice does to the characters and the story.

But they may have more to do with politics than art. Plays like Birdie Blue have the sort of diversity that moderate-liberal theatre-goers seem to expect, while never becoming threatening. Plays like this, which explore historical experiences of race, of course leave the issue safely in the past, telling an inspiring story of "Look how far we've come!" without ever daring to ask hard questions about race in contemporary society.

And complementing this is the deeply conservative message of the play. There's long been a vocal libertarian opposition to much of the results of the Civil Rights movement. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has, of course, opposed Civil Rights-era victories like affirmative action because he deems it patently unfair to benefit (or deny) an individual on race alone. Cheryl West's script, whether intentionally or not, embodies that logic.

First, its representation of the impact of the Civil Rights movement itself feels revisionist. Birdie's son becomes radicalized (he even starts dating a white woman!) in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. He goes to jail after an SLA/Weatherman style bank robbery goes wrong and a guard winds up dead, only to reject his mother while in prison and disappear from her life forever.

But more troubling than the suggestion that the Civil Rights movement was guilty of tearing apart the social fabric and destroying families is West's use of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, snippets of which play throughout the show on the radio. The text of the famous speech becomes a sort of personal self-help guide for Birdie, as if its message was one of personal mission and fulfillment. We can perhaps be pardoned for having assumed that Dr. King's use of the first-person singular was a rhetorical device employed to call for basic human rights and dignities. But that sort of myopia infects the entire script. Without venturing to suppose what Dr. King would have thought of assisted suicide, we can say that we find it doubtful that he would have seen Birdie's struggle to "care for" (read: abuse) her ailing husband as an attempt to maintain her personal dignity, so much as a reason to call for better social services and support to preserve the dignity of her ill husband.

Alas, Birdie Blue is a deeply confused and fundamentally flawed play, the current production of which wastes much of the talent of some truly fantastic actors. A note to Seattle theatre directors: Feel free to cast William Hall Jr. as often as you like--we'll come to see him any day. And find a good excuse to bring Velma Austin back to Seattle. We need performers like these, just not plays like this.

"Birdie Blue" @ Seattle Rep // thru Dec. 16 // tix $26-$40

Photo of (L-R) Velma Austin as Birdie and William Hall Jr. as Jackson in Cheryl L. West’s Birdie Blue playing in the Leo K. Theatre until December 16, 2007. Photos copyright Chris Bennion, 2007.