“The Best of Enemies”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - July 2011

GailSez: This is my review of the July 2011 production which I am reposting for this show’s October 2011 run. The only change is that Don Guillory has replaced Clifton Duncan in the role of Bill Riddick. Duncan had a previous autumn commitment and was sadly unavailable.

“[But] the two races…cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“When the news came over the radio that Martin Luther King was assassinated, I got on the telephone and begin to call other Klansmen… We just had a real party… Really rejoicin’ ’cause the son of a bitch was dead. Our troubles are over with. They say the older you get, the harder it is for you to change. That’s not necessarily true. Since I changed, I’ve set down and listened to tapes of Martin Luther King. I listen to it and tears come to my eyes cause I know what he’s sayin now. I know what’s happenin’.”
– C.P. Ellis

Julianne Boyd has done it again! This time she has directed as well as produced another world premiere of a powerful new play by Mark St. Germain that hits at the heart of the current state of race relations in this country by shining the spotlight on an unlikely pair of protagonists. But unlike Freud’s Last Session this is no imagined meeting or possible dialogue. The events depicted really happened and two of the people portrayed in the play were in the audience on opening night, lending their immediate veracity to a story that would be unbelievable if it were offered up as fiction.

Based on the 1996 book of the same name by Osha Gray Davidson (1954- ), The Best of Enemies, dramatizes the relationship between North Carolina civil rights activists Ann Atwater (1935- ) and Claiborne Paul “C.P.” Ellis (1927-2005). Not only is Atwater black and Ellis white, he was, at the start of their friendship, the Exalted Cyclops of the Durham Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. They were brought together in 1971 by a brash young civil rights worker named Bill Riddick to chair a charrette – a ten-day community meeting – to begin the business of desegregating the Durham school system, something that had failed to happen in the 17 years since the Supreme Court decided Brown vs Board of Education.

Needless to say, it was not friendship at first sight. But it was, eventually, a match made in heaven. As the two worked together they realized what they had in common as members of the Southern working poor, trying to do the best by their children and their community. Ellis publicly ripped up his Klan card and joined Atwater in working for civil rights for all Americans. They became fast friends and remained so for the rest of his life. She eulogized at his funeral.

My greatest fear before attending The Best of Enemies was that it was going to be a third “talking heads” play for two characters, like Going to St. Ives and Dutch Masters, the earlier theatrical offerings of the Lift Ev’ry Voice Festival celebrating African-American culture and heritage in the Berkshires. Both of those had been intriguing plays well worth seeing, but there is just so much you can do with just two characters on stage. And while both of those works had been staged in small venues, this one was supposed to fill the much larger BSC MainStage.

So I was delighted to discover that The Best of Enemies boasted a cast of four. Aisha Hinds plays Ann Atwater, John Bedford Lloyd plays C.P. Ellis, Clifton Duncan plays Bill Riddick, and Susan Wands plays C.P.’s wife, Mary. They are all uniformly excellent. I cannot imagine a better cast.

And St. Germain has written a really dynamic script consisting of a series of brief scenes mixing and matching the characters and moving the story along at a brisk clip. Boyd and her creative team – Scenic Designer David M. Barber, Lighting Designer Scott Pickney, and Sound Designer Brad Berridge, have created a look for this production that is able to keep up with that pace. Large vertical and horizontal screens shift positions beneath the proscenium arch while appropriate period views of Durham are projected on to them. Behind and above them all hangs a reproduction of the large illuminated sign reading “Durham, Renowned the World Around. Progress, Health, Wealth, Success.” erected near the city’s train station in 1913 and sadly was destroyed by a storm shortly thereafter.

The actors actually have only a narrow strip of the downstage portion of the stage on which to perform, and the combination of foreshortened stage, the big sign, and the large projected images go a long way to helping the four actors command the Main Stage theatre.

Berridge uses sound bites from the era – campaign ads, snippets from interviews with politicians, etc. – to bring the era to life. Reminding us what a very short time ago it was when people spoke openly in racist terms. I was frankly shocked and frightened in these politically correct days to hear Ellis’ hate-filled Klan-speak in the early scenes of the play. There were many people of color in the audience and I worried that they were being hurt or offended by this.

But there came an important turning point in the play, when Atwater has agreed to allow Ellis to mount an educational exhibit about the Klan in the high school where their charrette is meeting, in exchange for allowing her church choir to sing. Together they observe some students planning to destroy the exhibit, and Atwater steps forward and says: “You want to come back in here and tear things up? Well that’s not gonna happen! You’re going back to class right now and tell them about this exhibit. Then you’re going to bring them all back here and see these pictures and study every word you read. You want to know where a person’s coming from you’ve got to know how he thinks. Fight with your brain.”

And that was when I realized that I had been frightened of the Klan scenes because I was ignorant. I had been brought up to believe that these people and their ideas were bad and wrong and caused nothing but trouble. In my mind, those words really could hurt not just people’s feelings, but the whole balance of race relations. I was so wrong. It is keeping quiet that is wrong – always. When we talk, when we listen, when we hear and understand, only then can progress be made – even when what we hear is hard and ugly to our ears. Even beautiful music can sound that way on first hearing.

The reason we keep our enemies distant and unknown is because only then can we justify killing them. If we knew them, we would realize that they are just people, like us. Communication is the key to peace.

“One day, Ann and I went back to the school and we sat down. We began to talk and just reflect… I begin to see, here we are, two people from the far ends of the fence, havin’ identical problems, except hers bein’ Black and me bein’ White… The amazing thing about it, her and I, up to that point, has cussed each other, bawled each other, we hated each other. Up to that point, we didn’t know each other. We didn’t know we had things in common…”
– C. P. Ellis

Didn’t I just write about the danger of keeping quiet? Oh yes, that was my Love of the Nightingale review. And there I was writing about gender politics. Males and females understand each other only very slightly better than do members of different races.

Theatre critics are not allowed to participate in standing ovations because it would be a visible, public endorsement of the performance, and these days standing “O”s are dealt out way too liberally by the average audience. But on occasions like this, when an ovation is clearly indicated, there is nothing more frustrating than having to remain seated while everyone else is on their feet having a great time. Makes me feel mean and small, and I can’t see what’s going on, which, in this case, was a rousing number by the choir of the Price Memorial AME Zion Church of Pittsfield. But when the cast introduced Riddick and Atwater in the crowd, I was on my feet in a flash! This public demonstration had NOTHING to do with theatre and everything to do with honoring two remarkable people. What a wonderful and thrilling surprise.

As we walked out of the theatre my companion said in awe “Is this what they mean when they call it a World Premiere?” Um, no. I go to about a dozen “world premieres” every year and they are usually dull and often disappointing. This was special. There was a real red carpet atmosphere in the theatre and a communal sense in the departing crowd that we had witnessed something unique and important.

Somehow, I wasn’t aware when I saw Going to St. Ives that it was a part of the Lift Ev’ry Voice Festival, and so I sadly have no memory of the audience I attended with, but I think I would have remembered if there had been a sizable number of people of color because that is so very rare in the theatre in this region. I remember once bringing a black friend to a show with me and being uncomfortably aware that everyone was looking at us. Was my fly unzipped? Was there spinach between my teeth? No, I was just at the theatre in the company of a black person and that was a remarkable sight.

By the time I saw Dutch Masters last Saturday I did know that it was a Lift Ev’ry Voice event, and I commented on the all-white opening night audience and lack of attention paid to the lone black cast member when the white actor and the white playwright had both been interviewed by the local press.

Opening night of The Best of Enemies boasted a truly integrated crowd, and a big one too – the parking garage was full to the gills and there was a line stretching down Union Street waiting to pick up tickets. How exciting! A ticket line in PITTSFIELD!

What Boyd has created is not just wonderful theatre, it is a sense of community. I didn’t just witness Barrington Stage birthing another hit play – for I have no doubt that this production will go on to New York City and meet with great success – I witnessed a great night for Pittsfield. A night that will help solidify the cultural status of the city and the region for years to come.

Click HERE to view the photo gallery for this production

Click HERE to listen to the WAMC interview with Boyd, St. Germain and Atwater

Click HERE to watch the BSC video diary with clips from the show

Click HERE to see audience comments from the BSC iCritic Booth

Why I Quit the Klan: An Interview with C.P. Ellis by Studs Terkel
from American Dreams: Lost and Found (New York: Pantheon Books, Random House, Inc., 1980)

An article about the documentary film An Unlikely Friendship in which you can see and hear the real Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis speak about their relationship.

The Barrington Stage Company production of The Best of Enemies runs July 21-August 6 at the BSC Mainstage, 30 Union St., Pittsfield, MA. The show runs 90 minutes with no intermission and is suitable for ages 14 and up. Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7pm, Thursday through Saturday at 8pm, Friday Matinees at 2pm (excluding Friday, July 22), and Sunday at 5pm. Additional Wednesday matinee August 3 at 2pm. Opening Night: Wednesday, July 27 at 7pm. Tickets: $15-$58. Seniors: $35 all matinees. Youth 18 and under $15 all performances except Saturday evening.

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