There is nothing sentimental about a “dead revolution,” hustler Nina tells Kenyatta, her political prisoner father, early in Sunset Baby. Kenyatta intended his daughter to be the embodiment of Black liberation, a role she has rejected—even as she secretly regards herself as a disappointment.
Revolution is the heart of Sunset Baby, written by Dominique Morisseau, which first premiered in London in 2012. Following Signature Theatre’s off-Broadway revival earlier this year in New York, Morisseau’s play has landed at Anacostia Playhouse, where it’s being directed by Deidra La Wan Starnes. (Editor’s note: On April 15, Theater Alliance, the company in residence at Anacostia Playhouse, shared in a news release that Playhouse was being evicted from the property and claimed that AP had been using the company’s rent payments not for “the intended purpose” and had locked Theater Alliance out of the building. Anacostia Playhouse has not responded to the claims; tickets to Sunset Baby are still available through the play’s full run.)
As Kenyatta (DeJeanette Horne) declares, “the man in the mirror” is the target of the greatest revolution: self-recreation. As Morisseau expressed in a February interview with Vogue, all of Sunset Baby’s characters are on the “brink of their own revolution, their own major change.” In the course of 90 minutes, each character must choose—or refuse—to confront their past to chart a new future.
Nina (Tierra Burke) has fallen a long way from the ideals of her Black Power activist parents. She ekes out a living on New York’s East Side dealing drugs and posing as a sex worker to lure in would-be johns for her boyfriend, Damon (Shawn Sebastian Naar), to rob. She is recently orphaned following the death of her mother, who had a years-long struggle with mental illness and addiction—a struggle Nina blames on her not-for-long estranged father. Kenyatta was sentenced to prison for robbing an armored car as part of his revolutionary praxis; Nina’s mother was left to pine for him during his lengthy imprisonment.
Then Kenyatta crashes into Nina’s life, hoping to read the unsent love letters her mother wrote to him in his absence, letters which have sparked a high-stakes bidding war by academics and archivists eager to have the intimate correspondence of two Black revolutionaries for their collections. And that’s the crux of the play: Will Nina give the letters to her father, sell them to fund a future of her—or Damon’s—choosing, or keep them as her only memento of her late mother? How the letters’ existence became widespread knowledge is never fully explained—that may be the conceit of the play.
The intensity of the conversations between Nina and Damon, Damon and Kenyatta, and Kenyatta and Nina is the greatest strength of Sunset Baby, perfectly executed by Burke, Naar, and Horne. In the intimacy of Anacostia Playhouse, Burke is ground-shaking as Nina, by turns charming, vulnerable, callous, and justly enraged at these two men who use her: Damon, who steals her money and her labor; her father, who struggles to relate to her as a person, not the vessel for his ideals. Naar’s Damon is a lovable scoundrel, delivering some of the biggest laughs of the show, but whose undeniable charm takes on a more sinister quality as the story progresses.
Horne, meanwhile, brings both gravitas and tenderness as Kenyatta. Unable or afraid to speak directly to his daughter, he prepares video letters to her, monologues to a camera that transition from purely political to deeply personal over the course of the narrative. Kenyatta, who struggles to reconcile his identities as revolutionary and father, exudes a warmth and paternal care even before the character realizes he already possesses the very qualities he desperately wants.
The first half to two-thirds of Sunset Baby are a series of wonderfully constructed vignettes, full of fervor and tightly structured, but the script struggles to bring this tension to a satisfying resolution. Following Nina’s final scene with her father, the causality and motivation of the characters becomes obscure.
The closing series of scenes feel a bit disconnected and discombobulated—each of which could be an end in and of itself. It feels as if Sunset Baby is toying with all the possible endings before settling on a happier one. There is nothing wrong with a happy ending, nor is it implausible even for this raw and cynical story, but it requires narrative work to make the audience believe.
The closing scene illustrates the most unsatisfactory part of this production, and the only fault that can be laid at the feet of Anacostia Playhouse rather than the playwright. The sound design, overseen by Melanie Burwell, who is also stage manager, struggles to find balance. Nina’s strong closing monologue is drowned out by too many sounds—including Kenyatta’s voice (which in itself deserves the audience’s full focus), music, plane noises, and an incessant, grating doorbell buzzer. It is a cacophony.
The lighting design by Jerrett Harrington, however, subtly and clearly conveys the passage of time and the change of mood. The set design is sparse and economical, but satisfactory, allowing the actors to demonstrate that their skills need no window dressing to dazzle. In all, Sunset Baby is worth a visit to Anacostia Playhouse (but they need to soften the sound of that apartment buzzer).
Sunset Baby runs through April 28 at Anacostia Playhouse. anacostiaplayhouse.com. $35.