Till was a child of this great city. His inestimably courageous mother lived quietly on the South Side. And through the giants of the African-American media here assembled, Chicago told the world about the murder of Till down Mississippi way and what it all meant.
After Mamie Till-Bradley (later Mamie Till Mobley) opened up her boy's casket and flashbulbs of Chicago photographers popped, America was never the same.
No historical figure has greater claim on the venerable stage of the Goodman Theatre.
He and his mother deserved a much more cohesive play and a much more dignified production.
Ifa Bayeza's "The Ballad of Emmett Till" was, without question, carefully researched and sincerely meant.
For those hitherto oblivious to this particular chain of events, it will provide some shocking educational vistas.
And this story has become such a touchstone for so many people, it's inevitable that those of us with investments therein will have our own issues. I spent some life-changing time with Till Mobley before her death, and that has surely had an impact on my feelings about this show.
I'm speaking particularly about a horribly misguided second act that dissolves into a long, climactic and brutally graphic depiction of Till's beating and murder.
If you are going to put an audience through such an experience—and several people around me were unable to watch—you need greater justification than what's offered here. There are a few attempts at post-facto symbolism—the beaten body of Till even takes on a Christ-like symbolism as electric guitar plays, suggesting the indignity of "Jesus Christ Superstar."
And there is a brief final exchange between mother and boy. But you still leave the theater with the blows against the body of a 14- year-old boy ringing in your ears.
Perhaps Bayeza and her director, Oz Scott, felt we didn't understand all that Till went though, even though we surely all know the ugliness of what happened.
I can see that case. But they still fail to adequately contextualize it, or take us through to the other side, or honor this particular mother's well-documented lifelong struggle that her boy not die in vain.
And why end with this brutality? Till's story is a hellish one, but his pain evolved into the hope of social change. This show leaves you little of that.
As played by the wildly uneven Joseph Anthony Byrd, this Till feels not like a 14-year-old boy—and a boy was all he was—but a contemporary college man with a seductive way with women. Mose Wright ( John Wesley), the ill-educated but astonishingly courageous Mississippian who testified against Till's murderers, seems to shift character and sophistication with every scene. It's as if nobody wants to admit who he really was, even though he's a man who stood up and changed history.
For much of the first act, we get a mostly pedestrian and realistic narrative. But just when we think we have a handle on the show's rules, it changes them around. In the trial scene, the judge keeps disappearing.
Snatches of narrative come and go. Ill-formed symbols pop in and out. Little tension emerges. Little feels grounded in truth.
There are some decent actors in the piece, including Karen Aldridge, Kirk Anderson and Samuel G. Roberson Jr. (who genuinely evokes teenage awkwardness).
And as a dignified Till-Bradley, Deidrie Henry has some well-crafted moments, most notably at the funeral back in Chicago.
But none of this can redeem a piece that has yet to figure out its core or purpose, yet to decide where it wants us to go, yet to determine in what or whom it believes. Nor does the play sufficiently stand outside of these events and help us come to terms with them again.
If you look at the footage from the actual sham trail in Mississippi, you can see a bushel-load of pathetic, fearful white faces—unhinged by the coming changes and their role therein.
Here we just get the bluster without the terror behind the eyes.
Frankly, though, I'd have settled for just the boy himself and the mom—a sense of the kid's spirit before it was cut down by ignorance and of the mother's faith and courage. We are promised a ballad here, which suggests a plaintive song, sure, but also a clear, personal narrative. It will take a lot more soul-searching for that to emerge.
cjones5@tribune.com
"The Ballad of Emmett Till"
When: Through June 1
Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.
Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes
Tickets: $23-$70
Phone: 312-443-3800
