Review: At Oakland Theater Project, a play written in 1987 has a new way to say Black Lives Matter – SF Chronicle Datebook

Stanley Hunt (left) as Blood and Dane Troy as Acts in Oakland Theater Projects The Mojo and the Sayso. Photo: David Flores II / Oakland Theater Project

Its been three years to the day since Linus, a Black child, was killed by plainclothes police officers. But none of his family has been set free yet not from any physical barrier, nor from their blinding grief or righteous yet futile rage.

In Aishah Rahmans 1987 play The Mojo and the Sayso, if justice was ever a hope, it was a slim one, now long buried. The freedom the Benjamin family seeks is to love one another again.

Each character in the play, now in an Oakland Theater Project production that opened Sunday, June 5, channels his or her unrequited feeling into a false idol and tries and fails to convert the others to worship.

For Awilda (Paige Mayes), its a church led by a snake oil salesman of a pastor (Reginald Wilkins). For her husband, Acts (Dane Troy), its the car hes been building in their living room out of junkyard scraps, the car whose metal tube outline ingeniously dominates Karla Hargraves set. As Acts tinkers on the vehicle throughout the show, he might hang gears and other parts by string to the contour, almost as if hes trimming a Christmas tree or as if hes literally pinning his hopes on a castle in the air.

For the couples surviving son, Blood (Stanley Hunt), the false idol is weapons. Every shadow and rustle is a threat to him now, and brandishing a handgun or a knife isnt just his way of protecting home; its his way of being seen in it.

The poetic, probing play, directed by Ayodele Nzinga, is sharp about the ways family members can live right on top of each other without ever intersecting or seeing or hearing one another, and how sorrow and guilt and fury only further entrench that isolation. Even when the Benjamin family members finally cry out for connection with all the fire in their bellies, even as all sides want it, none can say so in a language the others understand.

But even at a mere 80 minutes, the show frequently languishes. A fight scene is so clumsily realized that its not clear if anyone on stage believes the weapon is real. Its as if the only direction the performers got was to improvise and hope for the best when that scene rolls around. And Hunts Blood aimlessly drifts about and circles the stage to the point of distraction, like a blinking light that wont turn off.

Turn your gaze instead to Mayes, whose performance here suggests shes ready for the meatiest roles on the Bay Areas most august stages. She moves with the crisp focus and expansive communicative power of a dancer. Her voice, which the script affords frequent, glorious opportunity to burst into song, can rip a hole in the air one Troys Acts can almost walk through, but not quite.

Mayes shapes each moment shes on stage with athletic prowess, intellectual precision and emotional clarity. Wherever she trains her blazing eyes, you know its the most important thing or person in the scene.

The Mojo and the Sayso needs Mayes remarkable talent and skill when, after one of the best reveals of true colors in Bay Area theater design history (the specifics must be kept vague for your full enjoyment), she must instantly give up on her beliefs in order to take her husbands hand. Together, they all leap into a dreamland that, in the magic of the show, has burst through the walls of their home.

In our own era of police violence, the plays finale reads as a special gift. One way we must insist that Black Lives Matter is to let families like the Benjamins dream impossible dreams and then pave their way to reality, if at first onstage, then everywhere else.

LThe Mojo and the Sayso: Written by Aishah Rahman. Directed by Ayodele Nzinga. Through June 26. One hour, 40 minutes. $10-$52. Flax Art & Design, 1501 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland. 510-646-1126. https://oaklandtheaterproject.org

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Review: At Oakland Theater Project, a play written in 1987 has a new way to say Black Lives Matter - SF Chronicle Datebook