Here’s what Joel McNally says about “Crumbs”

January 18, 2011

Kit and I regularly spend weekends in Chicago taking in Goodman Theatre and Steppenwolf plays on contemporary social issues, particularly race. “Ruined” by Lynn Nottage, which premiered at the Goodman and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009, was one of the most powerful.

A first-class production of Nottage’s play, “Crumbs from the Table of Joy,” just opened in Milwaukee as a collaboration between Renaissance Theaterworks and UPROOTED theatre.

Set in 1950s Brooklyn as civil rights and social justice movements are growing louder, the play centers on a black family migrated from the South, Godfrey, an uptight father atoning for a wilder past by becoming a disciple of Father Divine, and his two coming-of-age teenage daughters — the smart one and the pretty one.

The already natural conflicts intensify when two new women enter the home — a sensual, hard-drinking, leftist aunt and the white German Godfrey suddenly introduces as his new wife.

You don’t have to go anywhere else to experience a uniformly excellent cast and one of America’s best contemporary playwrights provocatively exploring important generational changes in race, religion and politics. “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” is at the Broadway Theater Center through Feb. 6. (414-291-7800)

-Joel McNally