'Leaving St. Paul': Shining a light on the Twin Cities' segregationist past

Actor Robert Isaac, who resembles Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and has his cadences down pat, is thunderous in Barbara Teed's "Leaving St. Paul." In a speech delivered in the late 1950s at the University of Minnesota, King says that while the Ku Klux Klan is not as visible as it once was, the White Citizens Councils have taken their place. One who bucked the segregationists was Arnold Weigel (Kevin McLaughlin), a Twin Cities Realtor who sold to minorities and was ostracized from his community. The play, adapted by director Meredith Larson, is still in its early stages. Its big cast, which includes Lindsay Teed as Barbara, Emily Rose Duea as anti-integration neighbor Virginia, and Marcos Lopez as grateful home buyer Jose Vega, works diligently to animate the historical material at the heart of the play. They find bits of humor and poignancy as they shed light on an important part of Twin Cities history. For that, alone, "Leaving St. Paul" is worth seeing. (8:30 p.m. Tue., 10 p.m. Sat., 7 p.m. Sun., Rarig Thrust, 330 21st Av. S.)

Rohan Preston