ON THE THIRD RAIL:
STRONG ACTORS KEEP THIS DUTCHMAN FLYING

The Trap Door Theatre is a quintessential Chicago storefront theatre — it’s housed in a converted garage, accessed through a narrow walkway, almost invisible from the street — that has built its reputation on offbeat, experimental productions. Their previous production was the divisive Ghost Fetus, and at least to me, “divisive” is a good thing in the context of experimental theatre; you’re not really pushing boundaries if you’re making everyone happy. All this to say I was slightly surprised that they chose to follow that with a new production of Amir Baraka’s 1964 political allegory Dutchman.

Ali Foley, Keith Surney, Genevieve Corkery, Carolyn Benjamin

Set entirely in an NYC subway car, Dutchman is mostly a two-hander. A young black man, Clay, sits in a train reading. He is approached by a seductive white woman, Lula, who opens a conversation by accusing him of ogling her through the car windows, and then proceeds to try and seduce him in a variety of different ways.

Trapdoor’s production opens with a simple set: an elevated platform with a bench on it, surrounded by stanchions at intermediate distances. While the audience filters in, three women, in different stages of dress seductively loll about on the stage, one of them seems to be on the lookout for someone. This is director Keith Surney‘s masterstroke: Lula is played by three different women, each one taking the reins of the character at a different stage in the conversation. Then the lights dim and when they come back up, Clay (Surney, pulling double duty) is sitting alone in the train, reading.

Keith Surney and Ali Foley

Dutchman is a bleak allegory of racism and black identity. Not only does it posit that racism is an inevitability in a mixed society, it argues further that it is impossible to overcome. At the start of the play, Clay is dressed in a sharp suit, his cadence polished and smooth. As Lula’s seductions and provocations ramp up, he starts to regress. His clothes come off, his mien gets rougher, and he starts to embody the stereotype that the woman, and by extension, normative white society expects from him.

It is a difficult part because for most of the running time of the play, he is passive and reactive. Surney gives a remarkable performance here, subtly registering Lula’s provocations and microaggressions, as his character slowly yields to Lula. His big acting moment at the end is also very well done, even if the monologue itself is not.

Carolyn Benjamin, Genevieve Corkery, Ali Foley

As Lula, Carolyn Benjamin (passive-aggressive and teasing), Ali Foley (aggressive and overtly, but playfully sexual), and Genevieve Corkery (violently sexual and overtly racist) are playing archetypes rather than characters and are all excellent, though if I had to pick one over the others it would have to be Corkery who is a terrifying force of malevolence and swans about the stage with such loose-limbed grace that I wondered if she was a trained ballet dancer.

Surney’s choice to split Lula into three also partly compensates for a crucial element of the script that’s been eliminated in every production I’ve seen, including this one: the play calls for the entire conversation to take place in the presence of silent commuters who either ignore the conflict taking place in front of them or watch with disinterest. These commuters come together in the end to conspire with Lula, underscoring Baraka’s point about an uncaring, fundamentally racist society. Considering the expense of having a number of actors sitting on a stage doing nothing until the last few minutes of the play, it’s understandable that small productions would omit that aspect, but it does weaken the thesis of the play; it is also why the play reads better than it performs.

Keith Surney, Ali Foley

There are a number of clever directorial touches: I particularly liked how Lula approaches Clay for the first time, her movements choreographed like that of an apex predator homing in on its prey, and the final sniff of approval is a witty touch. At a crisp fifty minutes, the play does not overstay its welcome. Although Clay’s big monologue is still a muddle of fascinating ideas that just doesn’t click, even with Surney’s superb delivery, the principals involved make this excellent production gripping.

Sixty years after its debut, Dutchman is as relevant as ever, and — to our eternal shame — will most likely be relevant sixty years from now.

photos by Chris Popio

Dutchman
Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland
Thurs-Sat at 8
ends on October 25th, 2025
for tickets ($22), call 773-384-0494 or visit Trap Door

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago