Tanya Barfield’s Professor Faces His Demons, Brings Us to Tears

 by Lynne Stevens

After a bout of terrible insomnia, math professor Lewis (the stellar Michael J. Asberry) is visited by the ghosts of his African American ancestors. They want to explain his life and they won’t take no for an answer. In tee shirt and pajama pants, Lewis constantly wraps his limp gray robe around him, then lets it go. Asberry illustrates how exposed and confused Lewis feels.

Playwright Tanya Barfield examines the African American experience, using one talented man battling with his ancestors. Despite the central drama of “Blue Door,” moments of levity lift us. Barfield’s blue door signifies a nightmare passage that can ward off off evil and mirror the past.

As Lewis, Asberry displays his awkwardness at the Dean’s tea party. But he’s also uncomfortable attending a Black barbeque. Like the Black writer in American Fiction, Lewis pays for his success in the white world: he has lost sight of his heritage.

Director Darryl V. Jones creates striking staging for the dream encounters—around the bed flanked by canvas covered bales of cotton. In a contentious scene between Lewis and his great grandfather (lively Louis Mercer II), he shows the men reaching across the bed, echoing Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam,” as they reconnect.

Under Jones’ tight direction, we laugh at the humorous way Lewis talks about his wife of 25 years, a white woman who has divorced him. She accused him of abandoning his heritage: “If a person flattens their existence, they deny the dimensionality of themselves and that’s difficult, because you never feel like you’re getting the whole person.”

She begged him to attend the Million Man March, where esteemed and controversial Black leaders took part. Lewis knows that his past has shaped him but, as an intellectual, he cannot identify with Black culture.

Asberry and Mercer shift between male and female voices, using both sound and movement. Their flexibility in gesture and voice brings believability and humor.

James Mercer II, with his melodious voice, brilliantly plays Lewis’ family—victims of slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching—displaying a horrifying history. Mercer moves with authority, taunting Lewis to remember the past.

Director Jones has written hauntingly familiar songs for Mercer. They sound like songs that slaves sang while working in the fields. In one cathartic scene where young Lewis is beaten with a belt, Mercer seems at the edge of control. Playing the young Lewis, he cries like a child. The audience draws in its breath.

As we watch the electrifying interaction between the two men, we experience revelations that reach deep into the past, expanding our empathy. The “Blue Door” is open, revealing a fresh new play.

“Blue Door” by Tanya Barfield, directed by Darryl V. Jones, scenic design by Hector Zavala, costume design by Kitty Muntzel, lighting design by Stephanie Anne Johnson, original songs by Darryl V. Jones, at Aurora Theatre, Berkeley. Info: auroratheatre.org – to May 19, 2024.

Cast Michael J. Asberry and James Mercer II.

Banner photo: Michael J. Asberry & James Mercer II. Photos: Alessandra Mellow