Review of Bourbon at the Border by Pearl Cleage Alliance Theatre, Atlanta, GA, 30 Apr.-15 June 1997. Reviewed by Freda Scott Giles University of Georgia, African American Review. Volume 31. Number 4 Dir. Kenny Leon. Set Design by Marjorie Bradley Kellog. Costume Design by Susan E. Mickey. Lighting Design by Ann G. Wrightson. Musical Direction and Composition by Dwight Andrews. Sound Design by Brian Kettler. Cast Charlie Thompson Terry Alexander Tyrone Washington Taurean Blacque Rosa St. John Andrea Frye May Thompson Carol Mitchell-Leon The production of Bourbon at the Border at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta in an extended run from April 30 through June 15,1997, marks the third successful artistic collaboration between playwright Pearl Cleage and Kenny Leon, Artistic Director of the Alliance, who also directed Flyin’ West (1992) and Blues for an Alabama Sky (1995, with a return engagement during the 1996 Olympic Games). Through these three plays, Cleage seeks to bring us to grips with our American past and help us understand and acknowledge its impact on present conditions, especially with regard to issues of race and gender. Great events are seen not through the eyes of leaders and celebrities, but through the experiences of the ordinary people who lived them. In Flyin’ West, a domestic melodrama becomes a polemic against domestic violence while it addresses the issues of what constitutes and defines a family and whether black nationalism will hold together the community of Nicodemus, Kansas, founded by the Exodusters who “flew” West to escape racist oppression during the late nineteenth century. Blues for an Alabama Sky is set in 1930 as the realization sets in that the Stock Market Crash has become the Great Depression. Ina Harlem tenement, against the backdrop of a community divided over Margaret Sanger's attempt to open a birth control clinic and the issue of reproductive rights, one character, Angel (originally portrayed by Phylicia Rashad), accustomed to living in search of someone to take care of her, changes the lives of friends and lovers by failing to accept her responsibility for the shaping of her own destiny. ‘The action of Bourbon at the Border takes place in 1995, but actually pivots around the events of freedom Summer, the black voter registration drive which took place in Mississippi in 1964. Murdered volunteer workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerer, and James Cheney were only three among the causalities of that effort. Two surviving casualties, Charlie and May, are the focal characters of Bourbon at the Border. During the thirty years since Freedom Summer they have tried to help each other cope with wounds that could not be healed, outrage thatReview of Bourbon at the Border by Pearl Cleage could not be quelled, and guilt that they could do so little to protect each other. They live in a small apartment near the Ambassador Bridge which connects Detroit, Michigan, with Windsor, Ontario. Their odyssey to escape their pain has led them there, "like desperados drinking bourbon at the border and planning our getaway." May's dream, resonant with the imagery of an escape from slavery, is to cross the bridge into the Canadian wildemess, where she and Charlie once spent a few happy days. The apartment setting, a living/dining/kitchen area designed for the smaller of the Alliance's two stages, the Studio, by Marjorie Kellog, reflects not so much the constricted economic circumstances under which May and Charlie live as it does their isolation and the suspension in their unresolved past. The angled perspective is slightly exaggerated, and the span of the bridge, which twinkles with lights at nightfall, looms over the ceilingless flat. Two doors, one into an outer hallway and another into the bedroom, are not masked, but open into the blue yclorama, indicating that, outside of a limited area of their space, there is much about their lives that exists in a netherworld, perhaps the border between sanity and madness that May has been valiantly, but unsuccessfully, attempting to keep Charlie from slipping over. Ina searing performance, Carol Mitcheli-Leon illuminates May's tightrope act as she struggles to negotiate the couple's material and emotional survival, helping Charlie maintain his balance without losing her own. Terry Alexander portrays Charlie, returning home from another in a series of confinements in a psychiatric hospital, making one last attempt to conceal his exhaustion and sense of hopelessness. The cast of four is completed by Andrea Frye, who plays Rosa, the downstairs neighbor, and Taurean Blacque as Tyrone, Rosa's paramour. At first, Rosa and Tyrone, a wounded Viet Nam vet, appear to be comic relief, foils for May and Charlie, bruised but hearty survivors of hard times dancing to Johnny Taylor's blues and Motown oldies; Rosa's description of her audition for a job as a phone sex operator brings down the house. However, Cleage makes then much more, leading May and Rosa to an explosive confrontation in the second act which forces those of us who are old enough to remember Freedom Summer to consider our positions on the borders between black and white experience as well as the lines of demarcation of our perceptions of the events which surrounded the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s. Leon's surefooted direction maintains dramatic tension; though there are some potentially over- the-top emotional moments, the integrity of the characters and the world of the play are held Cleage sets her plays against a backdrop of the violence inexorably woven into the fabric of American life, which eventually penetrates into the foreground of the action. Though the form the violence takes in Bourbon at the Border is somewhat predictable, the ending remains powerful. From beginning to end, it is May and Charlie's love story. With its spare plot and well- defined characters, Bourbon at the Border is the most fully realized of Cleage's three plays produced by the Alliance Theatre. 725-726 AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW http://www.academicroom.com/bookreview/bourbon-border