by Tracey Cusick

Stick Fly. the latest production of the Huntington Theatre Company at the Calderwood Pavilion, is a play about examining other people. The play takes place in a well-to-do house on Martha’s Vineyard, a vacation home belonging to the LeVays, an upper class African American family. It captures a few days in the lives this family; after which family dynamics will never be the same.

Kent “Spoon” LeVay, the son of Dr. Joseph LeVay, has brought his fiancee Taylor to meet the family. Taylor, who’s also African American, grew up in less affluent circumstances than the LeVays, and her self-consciousness in the upper class household is palpable. Meanwhile, Spoon’s older brother Flip shows up with his girlfriend Kimber. A self-described WASP. Kimber is from the same economic class as the LeVays; one of the running jokes in the first act is Flip’s attempt to make his family overlook this racial difference by introducing Kimber to them at “Italian.” Also present is the African American high school aged housekeeper Cheryl who’s filling in for her mother, the long-time housekeeper who called in sick.

These characters don’t balk when conversations that start out light reveal underlying assumptions about race and class, they respond with more assumptions, setting up many of the very funny lines in the play. But there’s clearly more going on: Dr. LeVay arrives without his wife and is evasive about her absence. Despite supposedly being sick, Cheryl’s mother keeps calling, and Taylor is strangely awkward about the subject of her father, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Various secrets are revealed during the course of the play, some secrets resulting from assumptions made much earlier than this weekend at the Vineyard.

The conversations between the characters are significant in that they mirror what often happens when real people discuss race and class: offense, often unintended, is given and taken. In some ways these characters serve as models for such conversations; despite conflicts they continue to interact, and some end up liking each other despite trying not to. Much of the play is laugh-out-loud funny, in part because the characters clearly articulate familiar cliches usually clouded behind metaphor. Ironically, the most hurtful and potentially unresolvable conflict is not the result of anything anyone says, but the result of something too long left unsaid.

The play gives the audience many questions to ponder. Is an elite education an automatic entrée into a higher social class? To what extent does family confer social status? How does financial support compensate for a lack of emotional support?

The set depicts the living room, kitchen, and porch of the LeVay home, and captures the feeling of a well-appointed vacation home. By virtue of the open design, some separate scenes cleverly play out simultaneously. The characters are all likeably affable and the players seamlessly slip into their roles. This play is very enjoyable as both a comedy and thought-provoking drama and will undoubtedly be a spark to many post-theater discussions.

Editorial addendum: I also saw this play and want to commend the entire cast for its excellent ensemble work. Playwright Lydia Diamond has constructed a narrative full of serious interaction (so much so that even the absent parents have quite a bit of stage presence), and the Huntington actors really make it work. It would be impossible to single out one of them as more powerful than another, but I still want to put in a special word for Amber Iman, who plays Cheryl, the “maid.” I found myself expecting to laugh a little harder every time her character had something to say. Except of course when things got serious…

The Huntington Theatre Company has just added several performances to the schedule because of the play’s popularity.
Stephen Brophy

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