Spunk
Yale Repertory Theatre
Through Oct. 25
A tight-knit community forever changed by the arrival of a charming stranger. Gripping romantic triumphs and ruptures. Unbelievable feats of luck, skill, and spirit. These hallmarks of a good tall tale are woven together with a wit, musicality, and fervor that honors Southern Black cultural practice in Spunk. The play is a dramatization of Zora Neale Hurston’s 1935 short story of the same name, uncovered by the Library of Congress in 1997, and produced for the first time ever by Yale Repertory Theatre this season with direction by Tamilla Woodard, choreography by nicHi douglas, and new songs, arrangements and music supervision by Nehemiah Luckett.
Hurston’s script conjures a community, set in central Florida in 1935, where every tongue is sharp with Southern wordsmithing. Words are as powerful and useful as any of the other weapons and tools seen throughout the play, and multiple turns of phrase jolted myself and other members of the audience just as much as the characters those lines were delivered to. Between all the hot gossip, heated confrontations, and steamy confessions of love throughout the show, I found myself admiring Hurston’s fiery pen over and over.
While Spunk is largely promoted as a play, the playbill reveals that a whopping 30 songs feature in each two-hour performance. Many of these are large ensemble numbers, including the showstopping “Sing You Sinners”, which exemplifies my favorite aspect of the piece: each song is integrated seamlessly and naturally into the action and emotion of the play, offering a compelling alternative to the style of the “traditional” musical. Characters seem to catch rhythm and harmony like they’d catch any other spirit, and the catching is infectious.
According to a program note by production dramaturg Eric M. Glover, the surviving text of Spunk features song “titles and scraps of lyrics” without a score, leading the creative team to spend the last four years researching and drawing from “Hurston’s own recordings in the library of congress, old records, internet video, yellowing sheet music, clips of historical performance… and our own community’s collective knowledge” along with Nehemiah Luckett’s own compositions and arrangements to present a score that they believe “is the closest to what Hurston intended.”
nicHi douglas’s choreography contributes to the gentle spontaneity of Spunk’s music. On top of using their bodies to and voices to express their musical whims, characters transform mundane elements of their environment into playfully percussive accoutrement; “Spoons” and “Washboard” are listed in the musical instruments section of the program, for example. At one point, a signboard is tipped over to become a tap board where performer Alaman Diadhiou shows off his fancy footwork as a character named Blue Trout.
Diadhiou is one of multiple standout performers in the production’s terrific cast, who vibrantly portray a community not unlike Hurston’s own hometown of Eatonville, Florida, under Tamilla Woodard’s dynamic and emotionally captivating direction. J. Quinton Johnson, who plays the titular Spunk, is a corny lover in the best way possible, someone you can’t help but root for to overcome the obstacles in between him and his paramour, the gorgeous and headstrong Evalina, who Kimber Elayna Sprawl portrays with great tenacity and depth. Naiqui Macabroad and Charlie Hudon III make a great pair of antagonists as Jim and Hodge Bishop, respectively, with each carrying the fascinating nuance of wielding hoodoo practice to resist change and maintain a status quo that Spunk disrupts.
Spunk’s designs lean toward simple, no-frills, period- and setting-appropriate gestures that forefront the drama and feel as though they could have been produced similarly in 1935 as they are today. That is, with one significant and wonderful exception; in a scene where a Hoodoo rootwork is invoked against Spunk, the design vocabulary of the production shifts dramatically, thrillingly showcasing the range and talent of scenic designer Karen Loewy Movilla, costume designer Kristen Taylor, lighting designer Gib Gibney, sound designer Justin Ellington, and projection designer Ke Xu 许可. I’m still getting goosebumps thinking about it.
In a speech following the opening night performance, outgoing Yale Rep Artistic Director James Bundy gave a shoutout to their resident dramaturg Catherine Sheehy, who has been advocating for Spunk to be read, seen, and produced at Yale Rep and elsewhere ever since the Library of Congress first notified her of its existence over 20 years ago.
While Hurston is better known to most as a novelist and anthropologist, Yale Rep’s long-awaited production of Spunk makes a great case for her as one of the finest musical theater practitioners in history, as well as for Luckett, douglas, and Woodard as some of the finest musical theater practitioners working today.
Spunk runs through Oct. 25, and you can get tickets here.
