‘Thoughts of a Colored Man’ review: Broadway tackles changing Brooklyn

A joyful shock of “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” which opened Wednesday night on Broadway, is that it is considerably more entertaining than its portentous and literary-sounding title would counsel.

What you expect to resemble a guide from a college syllabus basically gets belly laughs and a tear or two. And at 90 minutes, the clearly show is not a second much too long or limited.

Keenan Scott II’s new perform at the Golden Theatre, with refreshing heat, gives us what it promises: the inner musings of a group of New York black men.

These generally pleasant, occasionally combative, always participating guys reside in a gentrifying Brooklyn community, in which barbershops scrape by as Full Meals thrives and luxurious condos are eyed with suspicion and envy by longtime inhabitants.

With its contentious BK location and poetic language, “Thoughts” can appear across as a Spike Lee joint that has no affiliation to Spike Lee. That’s a excellent thing.

The men’s names in the script are Passion (Luke James), Love (Dyllón Burnside), Lust (Da’Vinchi), Happiness (Bryan Terrell Clark), Anger (Tristan “Mack” Wilds), Melancholy (Forrest McClendon) and Knowledge (Esau Pritchett) — really don’t stress, they do not phone each and every other that — and their monickers pair with their ages. The 20-12 months-aged is obsessed with no-strings sex, when the shed guy in his mid-30s finds lifestyle progressively tough to bear as expenses pile up.

And that’s what is most productive about Scott’s producing — his capacity to be equally road-corner particular and universal at the same time. Discover me a 35-year-old who simply cannot relate to personal debt and purposelessness. (Ok, depart Woman Gaga out of it.)

Scott also would make the issue that not each and every person’s daily life expertise in this nabe is the exact. Happiness just moved to a fantastic superior-rise apartment with his boyfriend and feels ostracized from his group since he’s gay and helps make very good revenue. 

“Why is struggle synonymous with currently being black?” he asks.

As Melancholy, McClendon hits home the toughest. The character shares extravagant grocery retail store aisles to assist support his brother, and all working day he’s forced to act chipper for whiny prospects who can not obtain the kombucha. 

“Tired of residing. Terrified of dying,” he claims. Ouch.

McClendon is an especially intriguing actor to look at. The performer, who was previous on Broadway a decade ago in the shattering Kander and Ebb musical “The Scottsboro Boys,” jumps from psychological severe to emotional extraordinary like a child stomping in puddles. In an instantaneous, he’s mad, shy, tickled or piercingly uncomfortable. 

Knowledge, meanwhile, is an African immigrant in his 60s who operates the block’s barbershop, and the magnetic Pritchett lends the participate in a grounding moral authority.

Not everything performs in Scott’s drama. Some scenes sense swiftly created and don’t connect complete-throatedly to the massive photograph. Anger, for instance, is a faculty basketball coach and delivers a monologue in which he’s annoyed that just one of his players already has an endorsement offer — and a diamond-studded watch — per the new NCAA rules.

Ripped from the headlines? Yes. Believably dealt with? No. 

Anger’s later speech about his individual unsuccessful b-ball profession, section of a crescendo to an psychological ending, is more impressive and fleshes out the character superior.

At instances I wished director Steve Broadnax III’s staging, established in the shadow of a billboard on which lots of places are projected, was a tad much more polished. Characters’ entrances and exits really feel arbitrary and the stage could be used additional dynamically. But — you know what? — too a lot of exhibits these times are staying polished by auteurs right up until they are indistinct, textureless blobs. Quite a few a sleek, ultra-bright British import is guilty of that offense.

It helps make sense that a clearly show about scrappy, lovable individuals acquired a scrappy, lovable generation.