Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Donja R. Love’s tough yet tender SOFT depicts love and conflict in a dead end youth correctional facility and beyond

• By drediman
• June 17, 2022
• No Comments

I spent my Sunday afternoon (just before the Tony Awards) taking in Donja R. Love’s play Soft, which is enjoying a world premiere run courtesy of Off-Broadway’s MCC Theater. As a playwright, Mr. Love has been establishing a name for himself by penning works that explore the many facets of Black Love and Queerness (as based on his previous plays Sugar in Our Wounds and One in Two). His latest play does so somewhat indirectly in its depiction of the story of Isaiah, an idealistic young English teacher at a nameless dead end youth correctional facility, and his uphill battle to keep his troubled students in line, let alone alive.

Mr. Love’s play is the third Off-Broadway play of note this season to be set in a classroom. Indeed, Soft joins Dave Harris’s Exception to the Rule (presented by Roundabout Theatre Company) and Sanaz Toossi’s superb English (presented by Atlantic Theater Company), both of which use the classroom as a metaphor for ways in which society systematically keeps certain people at bay. Beyond this well-trodden path, Mr. Love mixes in a touch of the magic of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Oscar-winning Moonlight, introducing fragile queer love into the conflict-ridden world of the play. Like his other works, the playwright’s language veers between poetic and muscular as necessitated by the drama. Although the classroom scenes teem with rage and hormones, Mr. Love isn’t afraid to give glimpses of tenderness and beauty just beneath the play’s tough surface. The play’s voluptuous conclusion is simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful, exploding the chains of systemic structures and toxic masculinity, moving beyond naturalism to a realm of limitless possibilities (perhaps Mr. Love was inspired by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s new ending for Pass Over on Broadway?).

The MCC Theater production has been gorgeously directed by the busy Whitney White, whose previous directorial gigs include memorably immersive experiences like What to Send Up When It Goes Down. Like that production, her work here is grounded in ritual and communion with the audience (no spoilers here). Nevertheless, the classroom scenes are staged with tension and credible conflict (kudos to fight choreographer UnkleDave’s Fight-House). The cast is exceptional, particularly Biko Eisen-Martin (as Isaiah), who brings moving emotional investment and clarity of intent to his character’s struggles. As the damaged students, the production’s young ensemble is simply sensational, injecting unalloyed rage, joy, and intelligence into their impassioned portrayals.

RECOMMENDED

SOFT
Off-Broadway, Play
MCC Theater
1 hour, 40 minutes (without an intermission)
Through July 10