It may feel like the hottest summer ever, but Dominique Morisseau wants to remind you of the blistering events of an even more scalding season 54 years ago, in Detroit.
The playwright does so in commanding fashion in what may be her best play: “Detroit ’67,” brought to you in fine digital form by Arlington’s Signature Theatre. Through the first-rate direction of Candis C. Jones and the restless cameras of Justin Chiet, the drama proves an engrossing snapshot of racial tension, aspiration and survival in the basement of a Black household during the 1967 Detroit riots.
As the Washington region’s theaters subscribe to the national segue back to live, in-person theater, “Detroit ’67” reveals the degree to which virtual presentation has matured over the 17 months of the covid-19-prompted shutdown. The production, featuring a terrific five-person cast — Stori Ayers, JaBen Early, Emily Kester, Valeka Jessica and Greg Alverez Reid — has been filmed on Signature’s main stage; the cinematographer weaves in close to give us a moviegoer’s perspective and the sense that we are in the disquieting eye of a societal cyclone.
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Two D.C. companies with more-limited resources, Theater Alliance and Solas Nua, have been experimenting meaningfully during the pandemic with digital performance as well. Their latest pieces, Theater Alliance’s “The Blackest Battle” and Solas Nua’s “Side-Walks,” reveal the degrees to which they are raising the dramatic stakes of their efforts and refining their techniques. What’s left to be determined is whether these are distinct from or central to the work they develop further, for the live stage.
Set in Morisseau’s hometown, “Detroit ’67” is part of a triptych that includes “Paradise Blue” and “Skeleton Crew” — the latter having been produced widely and especially well at Studio Theatre, in 2017. The dramatist has already been represented on Broadway by “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations,” due to return on Oct. 16, and for which she wrote the book. “Skeleton Crew,” directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and starring Phylicia Rashad, comes to Broadway early next year courtesy of Manhattan Theater Club.
“Detroit ’67,” an earlier piece nurtured at off-Broadway’s Public Theater, has at its core a supercharged incident: As resentments against the police simmer on the streets around the west-side home of Ayers’s practically minded Chelle, her altruistic brother, Early’s Lank, and his best friend, Reid’s Sly, arrive, bringing a problem. They’ve got an unlikely guest — an unconscious White woman, Kester’s Caroline, whom they found injured. What flows from that discovery is a surprising and delicate convergence of desperate and emotionally isolated characters.
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Morisseau incisively explores the dramatic possibilities of how animosity and suspicion mutate and dissipate when humans are compelled to confront one another as flesh-and-blood individuals. The music of Motown — in the heyday of Marvin Gaye and Gladys Knight and the advent of the eight-track — supplies a gorgeous soundscape. The costumes and set by Moyenda Kulemeka and Milagros Ponce de León provide essential confirmation of time and place.
A special note is required for Ayers and Early as the sister and brother who struggle to understand what the civil strife bodes for their futures. Their performances manage to be both tenderly theatrical and persuasively cinematic.
Interracial connection has a major part, too, in Sola Nua’s “Side-Walks,” a 35-minute film that is the product of an online collaboration hatched by the company more than a year ago. I reported then on my embedding in the making of “The Emoji Play,” a piece on Zoom by Jeremy Keith Hunter, with contributions from John King and director Rex Daugherty. That team reassembled with actors Cormac Elliott and Da’Von T. Moody, for the interwoven romantic tales of two men, one in Dublin, the other in D.C., that ends with ... well, I leave that for a viewer to learn.
The new piece, by Hunter and King, is more discursive than revelatory — it’s a pair of monologues that might benefit from a deeper investigation of who Moody’s Jermal and Elliott’s Connor are. Without a stronger sense of what they’re looking for, the exercise remains a bit academic.
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The star here, it seems, is Patrick W. Lord, who is credited as the play’s designer: Graphically, “Side-Walks” is 15 levels more advanced than the rudimentary “Emoji Play.” The playfulness with the digital format is an entertaining merger of technology and art. (I’d be tempted to describe Solas Nua’s webby journey as entirely apped.)
Theater Alliance has been carving out its own satirical niche online over the pandemic; its previous video entertainment, “City in Transition: The Quadrant Series,” explored in outrageous comic style the four geographic sections into which the District is divided, through the eyes of Black artists.
Now comes the allegorical, irreverent “The Blackest Battle,” written by Psalmayene 24, with music by Nick tha 1da and direction by Raymond O. Caldwell. The futuristic story of an America in 2069 that has changed radically and not at all, Psalmayene 24 (a.k.a. Gregory Morrison) conjures a rap battle brewing between crews from opposite ends of troubled Chief County. (Any resemblance to “West Side Story” seems purely intentional.)
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The structure, both stylized and raw, sometimes cries out for a bit more coherence. The breadth of the imagination here is welcome — and the video graphics pop with visceral energy — but Psalmayene 24 goes in so many directions that the crucial points he wants to make about wanton violence become slightly numbing.
The production, which clocks in at about 90 minutes, is best when it stops to take a breath, as in a duet between the story’s lovers, Bliss (Gary Perkins) and Dream (Imani Branch), performing Nick tha 1da’s silky “You Make Me Feel Like.” Maybe a work of this narrative complexity would be difficult to reimagine on a stage. But it might be fun to see Psalmayene 24 and Caldwell try.
Detroit ’67, by Dominique Morisseau. Directed by Candis C. Jones. Set, Milagros Ponce de León; costumes, Moyenda Kulemeka; lighting, John D. Alexander; sound, Kendric Maxey; director of photography, Justin Chiet. About 2 hours 19 minutes. $35. Through Sept. 16. sigtheatre.org.
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The Blackest Battle, by Psalmayene 24, with music by Nick tha 1da. Digital producer, Kelly Colburn; lighting, Dylan Uremovich; art and technical direction, Jonathan Dahm Robertson; costumes, Jeannette Christensen; sound, Matthew M. Nielson. With Bayou Elom, Emmanuel Kyei-Baffour, Jade Jones. About 90 minutes. $15-$35. Through Aug. 29. theateralliance.com.
Side-Walks, by Jeremy Keith Hunter and John King. Directed and music by Rex Daugherty. Designer, Patrick W. Lord. About 35 minutes. $15. Through Sunday. solasnua.org.
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