A FISH OUT OF WATER
The use of drama as a didactic tool usually works when we are learning new things or seeing old things through a different lens. Kia Corthron‘s Fish at Theater Row starts right away with two known facts we should never forget: in America, rich areas end up with well-funded public schools while low-income areas get very limited resources and overcrowded classrooms in dilapidated buildings. If that wasn’t nefarious enough, we introduced standardized tests that have consistently disadvantaged low-income students; how can they afford the internet access, computers, practice tests, and tutors needed to pass them?
Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew, Torée Alexandre, Morgan Siobhan Green, Margaret Odette
Rachel Leslie, Torée Alexandre
Latricia, aka Tree, (Torée Alexandre) doesn’t even have time to go to a library, the last resort if you are poor, because her mom is incarcerated and she has to take care of her asthmatic little brother (Josiah Gaffney) when he is not in school. She is rude to her new English teacher, Ms. Harris (Rachel Leslie), who could lend her a book but it’s her last copy and she has very little patience left. Years of cruel budget cuts and the absurdity of standardized testing have taken their toll on her. Alexandre and Leslie acted out their frustration in very different and credible ways, one with rage from feeling unfairly treated, and the other with the bitterness that comes after years of teaching in public schools, showing us parallel journeys into the downfall of an education system that is failing both.
Torée Alexandre, Rachel Leslie
LaRonda, Tree’s best friend, who used to go to the same school, won the lottery and is spending her senior year in a charter school placed on the top floor of the building. That part of the structure is renovated, the school is well funded, has computer and science labs, tutors, a gym, even uniforms. But they expect too much from their students, and Mikayla LaShae Batholomew makes LaRonda the ideal giddy and charming teenager who can’t find enough motivation to study all day everyday to keep the grades needed to stay.
Josiah Gaffney, Torée Alexandre
In the teachers’ lounge, Ms Harris hangs out with Nabila, one of her colleagues, played by Morgan Siobhan Green who changes dramatically from a judicious teacher to perky Lakkayyah, one of Tree’s teen friends; the rest of the cast, Margaret Odette and Christopher B. Portley, also effectively play multiple roles. The two teachers’ dialogue is mostly on the dangerous results of budget cuts and unfair, absurd standardized tests that leave them no time for real teaching — or even getting to know their students.
Torée Alexandre
Rachel Leslie, Morgan Siobhan Green
There is an interesting sub-plot concerning Ms Harris’s past but it isn’t properly developed because Corthon places a discernible emphasis on reminding us over and over of the same important facts; with too many declamatory dialogues and forcing the plot from one foreseeable tragedy into another to touch these issues, Corthon leaves her characters’ conflicts with no crescendo or respite.
Margaret Odette, Torée Alexandre, Rachel Leslie
Margaret Odette, Morgan Siobhan Green, Torée Alexandre,
Rachel Leslie, Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew, Christopher B. Portley
The straightforward direction by Adrienne D. Williams, who used a semi-presentational way to stage Fish, does not help, and neither does Jason Simms’s uncomplicated set design or Nic Vincent’s lighting. Sound design by Michael Keck and costumes by Mika Eubanks matched and enhanced the time and place, adding color to the tragedy. Like the American education system, this Keen Company and Working Theater co-production — which has truly honorable intentions — is a work-in-progress that needs to fix its flaws to properly serve its purpose.
photos by Valerie Terranova
Fish
Keen Company and Working Theater
Theatre Row, 410 W 42nd St
1 hour, 40 minutes (no intermission)
Tues–Sat at 7; Sat & Sun at 2; Wed at 2 (April 17)
ends on April 20, 2024
for tickets ($0–$130 sliding scale), visit Keen Company