The Pulitzer prize-winning American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks goes back to the Greek tragedies and Homer’s Odyssey to find a format for her play, Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3),which is set during the American Civil War.
The main characters have Greek names and there is also a Chorus. The artificiality, a classical and colloquial mix, gives the drama, serious and comic, a fable-like quality; and that is its special appeal. Jo Bonney’s production has a fine ensemble of actors who get it exactly right.
Hero (Steve Toussaint, a man of stature), the slave of a Southern white landowner, is promised his freedom if he will fight on the Confederate side with his master. Can he trust his master to keep his word?
The story is told in three parts. In the first part, the Chorus and a very old man take bets whether Hero will fight or not. In the strong second part, the white master (John Stahl) debates with a captured, wounded and caged Yankee (Tom Bateman) how much a slave is worth. It seems the worth of a coloured man, once he is made free, is less than his worth as a slave.
The third part begins with a Messenger artfully delaying his message. The Messenger is a talking dog amusingly played by Dex Lee. The liberated Hero comes home, his name, character and circumstances changed; but in ways which are so out of character that they do not convince.
The three parts are the first in Suzan-Lori Parks’ intended cycle of nine plays. Already there is a feeling of a modern classic in the making, something comparable, potentially, to August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh” cycle.