by Leigh Witchel
On its surface, “LIFTED” looked like a straightforward adaption of the parable of the prodigal son. Under the surface, there were historical parallels that told an additional story.
Put together by Rennie Harris, who’s worked out of Philadelphia in street dance forms for more than a quarter of a century, the show is a mix of several different genres neatly divided by who was performing. Set in a church, the congregation was portrayed by dancers. The dialogue mentioned Manhattan as if it were happening in New York. Perhaps that was a local concession; the clapboard house projections by David Dowling looked like Philadelphia.
“LIFTED” began with a montage of clips of news – all bad. The congregation moved in stop motion as it unspooled. The shootings of Blacks, but also the pandemic itself, the elections, the stories we are all buffeted with.
The congregation was led by Carl Robinson, Jr. as Reverend CJ. He was a formidable singer. He began his sermon, “Let there be House,” explaining how House belonged to no one and everyone: “No man can own House music . . . once we enter into His home it becomes ours.”
A small but strong gospel choir performed, fronted by a chatty, comic keyboardist, Joshua Sommerville. The singing was about power and praise, going up a key, adding more lung power. The focus was solely on the choir when they sang; the dancers were seated as in church, occasionally raising a hand in accord. When they danced again, the choreography was free-form or unison, an ecstatic form where physical exertion was worship.
The story was introduced through a sermon Robinson gave on the prodigal son. The press release gave Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” as the show’s inspiration, and there were pickpockets, but “LIFTED” seemed more aligned to the biblical source . For those of us who know Balanchine’s ballet better than Luke’s parable, the Reverend stuck with the bible, where the overjoyed father came to the returning “privileged” son rather than waiting for him to repent.
Right before, Joshua Culbreath did an agitated solo as this story’s Prodigal – also named Josh. Small, tense and wiry, his mother was dead, his father was mentioned in a voice-over rap: “I will never be like him, but I will never not be like him.” Josh argued with his aunt and uncle, then pounded his fists into the floor, flipped and spun round on his head. Reverend CJ asked his permission to pray for him in the form of a song, “Turn your life around.”
We met a quartet of thieves who were as comic as threatening. Members of The Hood Lockers, each did a virtuoso breakdance solo. They were led by Big Poppa (Rodney Mason), whose comic cynicism was a link to Fagin in “Oliver Twist.” Mason berated his pickpockets, then made an Underoos joke, immediately winning over all the GenXers in the audience.
But cynicism won out over comedy and his monologue grew darker. Mason argued that “the revolution was televised,” and gave a litany of the names of Blacks shot, while miming a gun and pretending to shoot. “And that’s why I gotta get mine. And that’s why you gotta get yours. But all you can do is take a Kaepernick.” It was becoming clear that Big Poppa was something more fundamentally cynical, in the mold of Lucifer’s relation to God. At the same time, he used his questioning not to justify revolution or change, but as an excuse to rob his own community.
The parallel with the prodigal son was set up. When Josh met the quartet, they stole his sneakers and money, but recognized him from church returned his property. He asked to join the gang, but even after an acrobatic solo including head spins and a breathtaking leap across the stage over all four gang members, their answer was “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” And yet he was recruited by Big Poppa, with the proviso, “If you want to get down with us you got to rob the church.”
The Reverend was set up to be superhuman: he vanquished the thieves with a single threat: “Don’t make me take off this suit jacket.” He was even able to soothe Josh and talk him into giving up the gun he had pointed at the Reverend’s head. In his final standoff with Big Poppa, even Big Poppa’s right hand man deserted him to go to church.
The choir sang “Amazing Grace” and after a comic setup about the soloist, Kimberly Britt, missing rehearsal, she began to sing “Who am I to deserve another chance.” In a convention with the audience in on the joke, Britt knew the song perfectly.
Harris upped the complexity of the choreography in the finale, but “LIFTED” was really a theater piece. With another populist touch, we discovered Josh’s uncle could breakdance with the best of them, with only an occasional rickety knee.
“LIFTED” seemed to end reassuringly, with the voice-over narration, “I dance and I choose to be free.” But at the end of the exuberant curtain call, the news clips returned. Big Poppa came out with his breath rushing at the congregation like a hot destructive wind, and got the last word.
Besides the story of the prodigal son, or “Oliver Twist,” there’s another comparison to be made: to Alvin Ailey’s work “Revelations.” It’s not regarding subject matter and composition, but about who’s watching it. In 1960 at the 92nd Street Y or in 2022 at The Joyce, there were two audiences in the house: a Black audience proud to see its culture onstage, and another audience being introduced to it. How has the balance between the two changed over six decades?
The hybrid nature of “LIFTED,” part theater, part dance, part gospel revival, is something that happens when a group takes their own vernacular material and brings it into a theater. The continuous evolution from worship as religious theater to theater as secular worship is cross-cultural, and “LIFTED” bridged the conventions of each deftly.
As Sommerville joked with the audience during a song intro, “We’re like Baptist preachers. If we don’t hear you say something we’ll be here until next week . . . You can even talk during the song.” He didn’t only welcome an audience familiar with the Black church into the theater, he quickly let the part of the audience more familiar with theater conventions in on the code of how to encounter a church performance.
A less obvious parallel: In 19th century France, with the rise of a middle class that could afford to go to the theater, the dances and operas in the boulevard theaters springing up in Paris didn’t neatly follow genres, or the unities, or accepted subject matter of mythology. They were responding to the taste of a new audience.
Perhaps that’s why even with its mentions of social injustice, “LIFTED” wasn’t radical. The narration speaks with justified paranoia about “pharaohs with blue badges,” but when the Reverend prayed for Josh, he didn’t mention systemic racism or social injustice. “Josh needs you,” he prayed, and implied the only things that could solve Josh’s problems were God and Josh. At heart, “LIFTED” was an affirmation of Black spiritual and middle-class values in a middle-class theater.
copyright ©2022 by Leigh Witchel
“LIFTED: A Gospel House Musical” – Rennie Harris
The Joyce Theater, New York, NY
August 14, 2022
Cover: Joshua Culbreath in “LIFTED.” Photo credit © Steven Pisano.
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