AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

In the sensitively performed and directed revival of Leslie Lee's The First Breeze of Summer, which opened last night at Signature Theatre Company, we're whisked back to a sultry summer in 1977 in a small town outside of Philadelphia and introduced to the three generations of the Edwards clan, a firmly middle class African-American family that's on the verge of having its foundations rocked to the core. Lee's Tony Award-nominated drama is a simultaneously intimate and epic piece, one that prefigures the plays of August Wilson.

Lee begins revealing Edwards family secrets, specifically those of matriarch Lucretia Edwards (the almost beatific Leslie Uggams), or Gremme as she's known to her family, during the play's opening moments, when Gremme is in her bedroom (just one of the many rooms visible in the Edwards' house thanks to Michael Carnahan's beautifully rendered scenic design), pulls a strand of pearls out of a jewelry box on her dresser. As she does this, lighting designer Marcus Doshi bathes the room in a light magenta, and we're taken back to the moment during the Depression when she received them. A younger incarnation of Gremme (an impressive debut from Yaya DaCosta) comes into the room with Sam (Gilbert Owuor). They're a going away gift of sorts, he's lost his job as a porter, and he must find work somewhere else. When Lucretia announces that she's pregnant, he promises to return, but it's hard to miss the hollowness in his words.

As "Breeze" unfolds, and in Ruben Santiago-Hudson's terrifically observed staging one feels as if one is truly watching the layers of an onion stripped away, events of the late 1970s converge with moments from Lucretia's past. We meet the men by whom she conceived her two other children: Briton (spiritedly played by Harvy Blanks), the arrogant, and yet insecure, adopted son of a white family for whom she works, and Harper (John Earl Jenks), a nervous and zealous preacher-in-training. Lucretia's story is almost an encapsulated vision of two or three of Wilson's plays as time progresses, and develops an increasingly sure sense of herself (evidenced beautifully in DaCosta's performance).

Even as the play reveals the past, we encounter the Edwards family in the present. There are simmering tensions between Gremme's grandson Nate (whose restlessness is ably brought to life by Brandon Dirden) and Milton (played with warmth and force by Keith Randolph Smith), his father and Lucretia's youngest child. Nate not only resents having to drop out of college to help with the family plastering business, he also feels as though his father is selling himself and the family short with the low bids that he submits on potential jobs.

It's a terrific portrait of three generations of African-Americans that's rounded out with marvelous details. Lucretia's daughter Edna (a spitfire Brenda Pressley) resents the fact that her mother spends all her time with Milton and his family. Milton worries about his mother's increasingly frail health even as he hectors Lou (played with sweet naïveté and uncomfortable ambition by Jason Dirden), his youngest son, about working for the family business in lieu of finding a summer job that Lou feels might be more apt for the future he plans as a doctor. There's even a seemingly impromptu revival meeting in the family home.

As all of these stories converge, love and hope are mingled with the angry and disenchanted spirit of the period (embodied by the Nate and Lou) and slowly, carefully, and shrewdly, Lee builds toward his climax that not only surprises, it also touches immensely.

---- Andy Propst

The First Breeze of Summer continues through September 28 at Signature Theatre Company (555 West 42nd Street). Performances are Tuesday at 7pm; Wednesday through Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 2 and 8pm; and Sunday at 2pm. Tickets are $20.00 and can be purchased by calling 212-244-PLAY(7529) or by visiting www.signaturetheatre.org.