REVIEW: trinity (Baltimore Center Stage)
DC has always been more expensive compared to its older sibling Baltimore up the road, generally meaning Charm City attracts a similarly healthy, if not edgier, cohort of artists. The bold strokes this leads to often means a hardened, risky stage culture, which can pay dividends if executed well. This extends to the bigger houses, too, not just the black boxes and closets around Charles Village. We in the DMV should all be aware by now that Olney Theatre Center is an official State Theatre of Maryland — a title it shares with Baltimore Center Stage. Under artistic director Stevie Walker-Webb, BCS has become known as one of the finest venues for Black theatrical voices in the nation. It makes me wonder why the Helen Hayes Awards includes Frederick, Lorton, and Columbia in its review radius—places nigh-impossible to access without a car, an hour from the District by every means— but not Baltimore, which is easily MARC or Amtrak-able every day of the week. I mean, Center Stage has the pedigree. They have the facilities. And they have the star power: I was able to attend the world premiere of trinity, a new play written by and starring Lena Waithe (Master of None, The Chi) and directed by Walker-Webb.
Book
I’ll come out and say it: the device of “writing a play/musical about writing a play/musical” is starting to feel like a tired trope.
More often than not it fails to actually say anything: they feel like exercises in getting around writer’s block that somehow ended up in the driver’s seat instead of the original topic. And before you say anything, yes; it can work under the right conditions. A Strange Loop, for example, does well for itself because it gets that out the way first: it knows that that is what it wants to do, and quickly affords itself the space to dig deeper than what most are comfortable with. trinity suffers from a sense of not knowing what it wants to do, and thus never makes such deeper introspection. The show chronicles the love (to some degree) triangle of three Black women, each nameless and only going by alphabetical lettering (A, B, C). A, the protagonist-slash-self insert, floats in and out of the pages in her typewriter as she tries to document the feelings that led to the recent collapse of her relationship with B. And the third one? She C’s her way into this relationship in a myriad of different ways, occupying several roles varying from God herself to a third wheel who craves power in their triad. Interestingly, what drives each character are an unbalanced level of responsibility. A needs to therapize the experience by writing the play, exploring the story via meta “what ifs?” that glitch throughout space and time, B wants to understand what she did wrong, and C — the most interesting character in the piece — utilizes the both of them to ricochet her own desires and motivations into the audience. Her diatribe ultimately seems to weigh the most through the show, making this relationship triangle flat due to the apparent unimportance of B to the trinity. She’s essentially scapegoated the entire time, and each time it looks like she will gain some deeper meaning, it pivots back to A or C. But the good news is that their interactions are consistently quite funny; Waithe’s signature dry wit and bluntness are made in full effect. These moments are what ground the piece and make it feel the most complete. Eventually the writing gives way to A’s own emotional turmoil, including a sour relationship with their mother, which only left me wondering what the “goal” of the piece was beyond a mental journaling exercise. There are a lot of conflict to bring up, and like in life, they aren’t always resolved neatly, if at all. But they can at least feel relevant. 5/10
Acting
Lena Waithe’s A is….Lena Waithe. Obviously, given it’s her show and her story, she feels mostly natural in the role as A. But that naturalism only extends to the bouts of frustration the character experiences, as when the more complex situations surface, she becomes a more reserved, emotionless version of herself. This demeanor dissipates rather quickly when a moment of humor arises, but is equally quick to reappear. B and C, Courtney Sauls and Fedna Jacquel respectively, do a lot of the heavy lifting to make up for it, particularly Jacquel. Her range of roles is an easy means of showcasing an engaging performance, but it still requires charisma and skill to elucidate them while maintaining a core, nigh-antagonistic presence. And to that degree she succeeds wholeheartedly. 6/10
Production
The staging leaves some things to be desired. As visually interactive and artistic as it is, it never feels like it serves a consistent vision except for perhaps three moments off the top of my head. However, such pearly voids create an excellent canvas for Hailey LaRoe’s gorgeous projections, which are diverse in texture, substance, and content that drive the production forward without ever distracting. The photographic skill extends into the pops of neon provided by Adam Honore, leaning into the otherworldly environs. 6/10
Viz
The thrust staging is stark and intrusive in an engaging way. The crooked sterility establishes a voidlike feeling well, disrupting the ideas of where “the show” starts and ends. While the element of a “trinity” isn’t that apparent, the contrasting neon marketing designs are sleek and ethereal enough to inform the viewer. 7/10
Verdict
trinity has its moments, and some enjoyable performances, but it feels more like a spirited journal entry reading than a story-driven piece of theater — which is fine, but some may have their expectations unmet. 24/40
