THE DOUBLE V GETS A DOUBLE D
It’s a shame that Carole Eglash–Kosoff’s period drama The Double V is such a lackluster, overwritten, repetitive piece of didacticism. The story is one which should be told. It concerns the The Pittsburgh Courier, which served the large Black population based there. In 1942, they receive a letter from 26-year-old James G. Thompson of Wichita, Kansas (an earnest KJ Powell), angry that he is unable to enlist in the US Army because of the color of his skin (he was brutally attacked by two white men trying to do so).
Nic Few and Jennifer Shelton
The letter, written with a little help from his girlfriend Annie (Nicolette Ellis) moves reporter Madge Evans (a luminescent Jennifer Shelton), who travels to meet its author, bringing back a story of far more depth and relevance to her editor and boyfriend Ira Lewis (Nic Few) than she could have ever imagined. This man’s letter sparks a movement, The Double V, one “V” for victory in the war and another for victory at home for Black people. Why should they be allowed to fight for a country that didn’t even see them, that didn’t value them as individuals, that didn’t protect them in the country of their birth? The Double V campaign set the stage for Truman’s 1948 order to fully integrate the armed services, and for the greater civil rights victories to come in the 1950s and 60s.
Idrees Degas, KJ Powell, Nicolette Ellis
Clearly at International City Theatre in Long Beach, there is little in the two-act, two-hour play that set a fire under director Michael A. Shepperd, whose prosaic, phoned-in direction has actors moving downstage to face forward as if reading to a classroom. For the Thompson home, the Pittsburgh Courier office, and a Cessna airplane factory, set designer Tim Mueller uses rolling set pieces for flowing scene changes, and Kim DeShazo provides authentic period costuming.
KJ Powell and John E. Phillips
Some of the acting is downright hackneyed, but in a couple of short but powerful scenes, Lee James is terrific as FBI agent William Taylor who, under authority of J. Edgar Hoover, threatens severe punishment under the War Powers Act for disseminating divisive stories meant to break American unity around the war. And John E. Phillips is a believable Charlie Simpson, the plant foreman where Jimmy works and an unabashed out-and-out racist and likely a Klansman. And even though Shelton’s listening style felt like a housewife’s reactions in a laundry soap commercial, she is such a pro that I found her eminently watchable.
Nic Few and Lee James
Act I is downright interminable, but Act II — with its steamroll of events and formulaic but upbeat ending — fares much better. Oddly, the play begins with a student from Cal State Long Beach presenting us with this story (I guess in a classroom, which may explain Shepperd’s staging), but he never appears again. The only modernity is the modern soundtrack during scene changes and some odd black squares on top of set pieces. Laudable, informative, and well-intentioned, this is a mighty story that deserves better dramaturgy to make the war between good and evil a universal theatrical event.
KJ Powell
photos by Paul Kennedy
KJ Powell and John E. Phillips
The Double V
International City Theatre at the Beverly O’Neill Theatre
Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center, 330 East Seaside Way
Thurs-Sat at 7:30; Sun at 2
ends on September 8, 2024
for tickets ($49 -$52), call 562.436.4610 or visit ICT