Airline Highway

Airline Highway

Manhattan Theatre Club

The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre

April 25, 2015

Photo courtesy of Airline Highway
& Manhattan Theatre Club

Airline Highway is a remarkable piece of theatre.  Originally produced at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago this past winter, it is now presented on Broadway by the Manhattan Theatre Club.  The production is superbly directed by Joe Mantello, and you MUST experience it.  Each actor in this powerful ensemble serves up a skillfully flawless performance.  The play is impactful.  It pulls you into relationships with a bazaar array of characters that are linked to one another through hardship and bad luck.  The stage overflows with enticing moments, enthralling stories, and engaging conflicts.

Photo courtesy of Airline Highway
& Manhattan Theatre Club

Tanya (Julie White) is throwing a “living funeral” for Miss Ruby (Judith Roberts), and all of her extended family members living at the Hummingbird Motel on Airline Highway in New Orleans will be in attendance.  The Hummingbird is a derelict motel, and its residents are prostitutes, strippers, drug addicts, ex-cons, drunks, and other assorted vagabonds.  The conflict begins when Bait Boy (Joe Tippett), who escaped the dead end life of his once companions, returns for a last visit with Miss Ruby.  He has started a new life in Atlanta with his “sugar momma” and has returned in the company of his teen age “step daughter” Zoe (Carolyn Braver).  The intertwining of relationships and hard-edge conflict runs deep and dirty.  The New Orleans style celebration of life builds to a drunken row in Act II where everything gets ugly, raw, and real.

The script, by Lisa D’Amour, is phenomenal.  She creates an ensemble piece that truly amazes the senses and engulfs the imagination.  D’Amour provides a personal view into the background of each character through Zoe and her ongoing research for a high school sociology report.  She has been assigned to research and observe subcultures.  Throughout the play she interviews each character on how they came to live at the Hummingbird.  Her character becomes an ingenious devise through which the audience is able to begin processing the experience of the play and take in the deeper subjects and stronger moments.  By the time the report is presented at the end of the play, it has become a stunning documentation of an outsider’s insight into this subculture. 

Photo courtesy of Airline Highway & Manhattan Theatre Club

So much comes at the audience so fast, and still amazingly naturalistic, that I want to see it again, or read it, so I can analyze the themes and the messages in more detail.  The essence and value of life.  The economic divide.  The significance of subcultures in a society.  The non-stop and exhausting running when we cannot face the truth about ourselves.  These are all themes that this play explores.  They explode on the stage as the celebration escalates.  It is too much to take in at once, but let the journey begin by experiencing the perspective of this playwright and the insight of this tremendous production. 

Domenick Danza

On a personal note:  It was a great night for conversation with fellow audience members. 

Before the show I had a great conversation with the couple next to me.  They were Manhattan Theatre Club subscribers and had seen a good amount of theatre from this and last season to talk about.  He was a Pediatrician and his wife was a Consumer Report analyst (or researcher). They were originally from Texas and during intermission we discussed the various “subcultures” the play presented, how far we’ve come as a society, and how far we have yet to progress.  They were a pleasant addition to my night out. 

As I was leaving the theatre, I met another couple.  The wife was very disturbed by one line in the play.  One character talked about being “airlifted out”.  This woman was from New Orleans and took that line as a flippant reference to Hurricane Katrina survivors.  She was extremely upset.  Our conversation was short, but to the point.  I asked her what she was upset about because I felt the play treated all the characters and their lifestyles with tremendous dignity.  She agreed and told me that she felt the details in the script and production were extremely accurate. The Hummingbird Motel was based on a Motel in New Orleans.  Miss Ruby and the stripper act she performed in her hey-day was very true to style.   It was that one line that threw her emotionally.  

This play is a kaleidoscope and clearly needs to be processed and discussed.  Specific moments have different meaning for different people, and it is when you share and discuss your reactions that you will realize the richness and true impact of the text and performances.