Downtown Race Riot

Downtown Race Riot is playing at the Signature Theatre located at 480 West 42nd Street. The play runs two hours fifteen minutes with one intermission. It closes on December 23, 2017.

Chloe Sevigny was nominated for an Academy Award for Boys Don’t Cry (1999).

The place is Greenwich Village 1976.

There is a bedroom of a teenager to the left, center is a living room/kitchen, to the right is another bedroom which looks like it belong to an adult.

Jimmy “Punt” Shannon (David Levi) is 16. His friend Marcel “Massive” Baptiste (Moise Morancy) is African American and is visiting him. Marcel is talking about going to the race riots later on. Jimmy is trying to talk him out of it, he doesn’t want to go.

Marcel leaves.

Jimmy’s mother Mary (Chloe Sevigny) comes in. She tells him she met a lawyer. Bob Gillman (Josh Pais) will be by later. Mary told him that Jimmy has a bad case of asthma from lead poison in the apartment. She tells him to lay it on thick when he comes. Mary said if they win the case they will be into big money. The family is on welfare. She is a drug addict. Both of her children have different fathers.

Joyce (Sadie Scott) goes to mother’s room. She tells her she is leaving to travel with friends.

Marcel comes back. He tells Jimmy he was having sex with a white Italian girl. Her brother wasn’t thrill when he found out about it. He was going to do something to him but chilled out.

Joyce invites Marcel to her bedroom. They have sex several times.

In the meantime Jay 114 (Daniel Sovich) and Tommy Sick (Christian Demes) come to the apartment. They tell Jimmy to make sure he gets Marcel out to the riot. The mob has plans to beat him up for fooling around with one of them.

The lawyer shows up. Bob and Mary do drugs and start to have sex.

That’s all I’m telling you.

It wasn’t a bad play. But it was to spread out, to much information to absorb at once.

The set was great but I caught myself looking at the actors where the action wasn’t wondering what they were doing.

Review by Rozanna Radakovich

Photos by Annazor.

To read a candid interview with the cast, scroll down to photos. Click on photos for this and other shows