CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
JIM reviews “AMERICAN VIOLET” – This 'flower' DOESN’T shrink (from confrontations)
“AMERICAN VIOLET” – This ‘flower’ DOESN’T shrink (from confrontations) = Rating: 7 of 10 stars.
(Per an advance preview:) Time and again, we’ve seen high-profile elected officials do things to try to ‘LOOK good’ to the majority in order to further their personal agenda (which often involves doing ‘whatever it takes’ [no matter how illegal or morally wrong] to get re-elected). That’s the story here, based on a true event in 2000, which chronicles a racist white Texas District Attorney (played by MICHAEL O’KEEFE) who works to target BLACKS he could harass & jail. An unmarried African-American woman waitress (strongly played by NICOLE BEHARIE) is unjustly accused by his office of being a drug dealer. Disinterested white legal reps urge her to accept a “plea bargain” (which like 90% of jailed Americans do rather than go thru a trial by their peers). Her mother (ALFRE WOODARD) urges her to accept that ‘easy’ way out of her troubles. But, supported by an ACLU rep (TIM BLAKE NELSON) and a local white lawyer (WILL PATTON), she works to try to STOP the bigoted pursuit of blacks by the D.A. and his police cohorts. It’s a well-acted, encouraging and uplifting look at some of the slow-moving periodic (fits-&-stops) progress in America.