Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum pays tribute to a little-known figure in African-American history in Ellen Geer’s illuminating, emotion-packed biodrama Trouble The Water, freely adapted from Rebecca Dwight Bruff’s award-winning 2019 novel of the same name.

Though you’ve likely heard of such 19th-century heroes as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver, the name Robert Smalls may be new to you.

It was to me, but thanks to playwright Geer, director-star Gerald C. Rivers, and one of the largest casts in Theatricum history, Smalls’ remarkable achievements before, during, and after the American Civil War can now be appreciated and celebrated under Topanga stars.

Born in 1839 Beaufort, South Carolina to house slave Lydia (Earnestine Phillips), young “Trouble” (Terrence Wayne, Jr.) more than earns the name his mother has given him, getting into scrape after scrape at a time when the slightest misstep might incite a lynch mob, illustrated early on with the public hanging of runaway slave Reuben (Clarence Powell).

Such might also have been Trouble’s fate with a less humane owner than Henry McKee (Alistair McKenzie), married to Jane (Robyn Cohen) and father to Eliza Jane (Fallon Heaslip) and Hank (Elliott Grey Wilson).

Still, there’s not much the relatively benevolent Henry can do to protect Trouble when he gets into a fist fight with spoiled white boy Peter Rhett (Sage Michael Stone) other than send him as far away from Beaufort as possible, and our young hero soon finds himself working in a Charleston hotel restaurant and after that on the Charleston docks, where a 23-year-old Trouble (now called Robert Smalls) hatches a plan to commandeer a Confederate transport ship and sail it, and his family, to northern waters.

If the latter event seems more the stuff of fiction than fact, well you know what they say about truth being stranger than …

All of this adds up to a much-needed history lesson brought vividly to life by more than two-dozen players, and if Geer’s adaptation often feels more like a Wikipedia entry come to life than an in-depth look at what made Robert Smalls the man he was, learning even the basic facts makes Trouble The Water well worth seeing, and under Rivers’ impressive direction, the Theatricum Botanicum outdoor stage and its surrounding hills give director and company an epic scope in which to tell Smalls’ life story.

Wayne makes a stunning debut as Trouble, taking him from childhood to young manhood in a performance than more than holds its own against stage vets Phillips (magnificent), Cohen (devastating), and Rivers, who gives older Smalls gravitas and grit.

Tiffany Coty shines as Robert’s wife Hannah, Heaslip transitions terrifically from child to adult, and McKenzie does dynamic double duty as Henry and none other than Abraham Lincoln himself.

Justin Blanchard, Ethan Haslam, Rodrick Jean-Charles, Frank Krueger, Michelle Merring, Danezion Mills, Powell, Franc Ross, Stone, and Wilson provide splendid support, some of them in multiple roles, and ensemble members Marina Brokus, Matthew Clair, Joseph Darby, Emerson Haller, Joelle Lewis, Tariq Mieres, Michaela Molden, Kenneth Montley, Venice Mountain-Zona, Susan Stangl, and Monique Thompson complete the cast to striking effect.

Adding to the magic are the vocal harmonies of Street Corner Renaissance Choir members Charles (Sonny) Banks, Robert Henley III, Maurice Kitchen, Terrence Brannon Reese, Anthony (Tony) Snead.

Hayden Kirschbaum works lighting design wonders, Yuanyaun Liang’s costumes and Danté Kerr’s props evoke  era, race, and social class, and Marshall McDaniel’s sound design actually had me believing there was an angry barking hound just a row or two behind me.

Kim Cameron is stage manager and Corrin King is assistant stage manager. Stuart K. Robinson is dramaturg. Kikanza Nuri-Robins is cultural competency coordinator. Beth Eslick is wardrobe supervisor.

Though it would probably take a six-to-eight-hour miniseries to do full justice to Robert Smalls’ life, Geer’s two-and-a-quarter-hour stage play is one worth celebrating for the light it shines on a man who deserves to be remembered alongside the justly revered Douglass, Tubman, Washington, and Carver,

Will Geers’s Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga.
www.theatricum.com

–Steven Stanley
August 20, 2022
Photos: Ian Flanders

Tags: Ellen Geer, Los Angeles Theater Review, Rebecca Dwight Bruff, Theatricum Botanicum