HOW IT’S GON’ BE


A black teenager comes of age to both heartbreaking and heartwarming effect in JuCoby Johnson’s How It’s Gon’ Be, a dramatic stunner as universal as it is specific, and the latest must-see from Echo Theater Company.

The sixteen-year-old in question is Jahaan (Donté Ashon Green), reared primarily by his 30something mother Angela (Karla Mosley) while the bills get paid by his largely absent US Army Master Sergeant father Kenny (Sedale Threatt Jr.), once again away on his latest military deployment.

Still, as things go in Jacksonville, Florida in the early 2000s, it’s not a bad life to be living.

The aspiring young writer has two of the bestest best friends any teenager could hope for in Rashad (Michael Howard-Dossett) and Terry (Durran Moreau), a neighborhood crush aptly named Lady (Nona Johnson), and a top-drawer education at a local arts high school that’s a class or two above the nearby school his friends attend.

Not only that, but since summer has arrived, vacation leisure means plenty of chances to shoot hoops with his besties, spend time around Lady, and jot down his latest poem in the writer’s notebook Jahaan carries with him wherever he goes.

There’s just one fly in the ointment.

Dad is back in town, which ought to be good news if only he and Rashaan didn’t share a lifelong failure to communicate.

Not that Dad has ever made much of an effort to phone home, a silence the still smitten Terry is happier to forgive than a son who feels more abandoned than cared about by a father with whom he has little in common.

But things are about to change for our young protagonist as they have in many a summer coming-of-age story before Rashaan’s, including a startling discovery where his two best friends are concerned, the slight possibility of losing his “V card” (though goodness only knows to whom), and a long overdue reckoning with a father he scarcely knows.

All of this adds up to a play guaranteed to resonate not just with African Americans (for whom Echo has scheduled a special “blackout” performance) but for theatergoers of all races, cultures, and ethnicities, each with their own coming-of-age story to tell.

It’s also a terrific showcase for four sensational up-and-coming talents and the two stage vets who join them under Ahmed Best’s incisive, empathetic direction.

Green delivers what well may be the year’s most stunning newcomer star turn as Jahaan, winning audience hearts from the get-go even as Jahaan’s own is broken at least once over the course of a summer.

It’s a role that gives the recent Cal Arts MFA grad the chance to play vulnerable, cocky, resentful, caring, and torn to pieces in a single performance, a feat he achieves to indelible effect.

Howard-Dossett does stunning work as a young man at war with his own desires, the charismatic Moreau is boyish perfection as a kid who’s learning to accept himself exactly as God made him, and a captivating Johnson makes Lady very much her own poised, confident teen lady.

Mosley is fiery and fabulous as a still young woman fiercely raising a child virtually on her own, and the equally fine Threatt has precisely the military bearing, musculature, and machismo the role calls for, with a hint of tenderness deep under the surface. (That Mosley gets to show off musical theater-honed pipes in three-part harmony with Johnson and Howard-Dossett is an added bonus.)

Amanda Knehans’s ingenious set transforms niftily into multiple locales (including a basketball court put to energetic use), Ann Closs-Farley and Sophia April Grose have designed costumes that effectively evoke a particular time and place, Justin Huen’s lighting works its own wonders, and Alysha Bermudez has compiled a summer-ready sound design mix of vintage R&B hits you’ll want to sing along to.

How It’s Gon’ Be’s West Coast Premiere is produced by Chris Fields, Troy Leigh-Anne Johnson, and Sam Morelos. Jenny Park and Lexie Secrist are production stage managers. Yannick Haynes understudies the role of Terry. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

 As captivating a coming-of-age story as I’ve seen in a good long while, and a sensational showcase for four rising young talents at the start of their careers, How’s It’s Gon’ Be looks to be another wallop-packing Echo Theater Company hit.

The Echo Theater Company @ Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village.
www.EchoTheaterCompany.com

–Steven Stanley
September 18, 2023
Photos: Cooper Bates

 

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