After Civil War, slaves and owners meet again

Those must have been some exhilarating but scary moments after the Civil War, when newly freed Americans and their former masters had to rethink their relationships.

In his wise drama "The Whipping Man," playwright Matthew Lopez tautly imagines how some of that confusion might have played out. One character, John, asks simply, "what do we do now?"

That question hangs in the air during much of this brooding play, which opened Thursday at Penumbra Theatre. The drama has some gruesome action -- namely a rude and desperate surgery that leaves a bloody mess on the stage. And "The Whipping Man" is layered with the kind of tension that could boil over into violence at any minute.

At bottom, this is a work about hearts and souls, about how a family, forged ignobly in slavery, tries to reconcile and find honor in the new era.

The play opens in a thunderstorm as returning Confederate soldier Caleb De Leon (convincing Joseph Papke) struggles into the formerly grand home in Richmond, Va., capital of the Confederacy. It is dark. The house is in disrepair, with broken windows. But it is not abandoned. Simon (James Craven), the former slave that raised Caleb, is there. Later, they are joined by another ex-slave, the wily fingersmith, John (Duane Boutté).

I can see why director Lou Bellamy chose this play for Penumbra, whose most famous alumnus is playwright August Wilson. In its complex welter of issues, in its interior explorations and the fact that it feels a tad talky, "The Whipping Man" is Wilsonian, with many secrets to unravel. True, it has only three characters onstage, and all of them are men, as opposed to Wilson's larger casts. But playwright Lopez has a similarly grand ambition, fashioning a work that serves as a metaphor for a nation trying to move out from under its historical burdens.

The three men are flawed characters: Caleb, just returned from the front, may have surrendered, as he says, or he may have simply run away. John, his whiskey-swilling boyhood playmate, may have "found" or "discovered" other people's things, as he says, or simply stolen them. Elder Simon may be illiterate, but he knows more than both Caleb and John. What unites them is a Jewish faith, and when they celebrate the Passover Seder, it is as an improvised family.

Playwright Lopez has an ear for dialogue and his play is well served by Bellamy and his actors. Boutté's John has a bruise in his voice that makes him both impish and likable. Craven gives a nuanced performance while Papke serves as a kind of testy anchor -- he is made still by his injury -- around whom many of the seminal questions of the nation could be raised. "The Whipping Man" offers a striking metaphor for a nation trying to do right by its ideals, and all of its citizens.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390