Review: Outstanding ‘Choir Boy’ at Steppenwolf Theatre – Chicago Tribune

Most of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s plays — such as the exquisite “The Brother/Sister Plays” — are poetic, passionate dramas wherein freewheeling symbolism dances on a lush, metaphoric landscape.

But “Choir Boy,” a 2012 drama you can see now in a superb production from director Kent Gash at Steppenwolf Theatre, is closer, really, to the movie “Moonlight,” for which McCraney, who spent many of his formative years in Chicago, won an Academy Award.

The play, rooted in American realism, is set in the fictional Charles R. Drew School, dedicated to the preparation of “strong, ethical, Black men,” and it centers on the senior-year experience of one gay young man, Pharus, played in Chicago by the Broadway actor Tyler Hardwick. Pharus leads the school choir and thus the play is suffused with choral arrangements. “Choir Boy” is almost a jukebox musical of the sacred sound.

McCraney is interested here in how elite Black education and its moral values surrounding manhood intersects with the needs of a hyper-talented gay kid. But the play is also a closely observed picture of Black male adolescence in totem, and, to go yet further, I’ll assert that anyone of any race who underwent the inevitable traumas of single-sex education (that would include this writer) will utterly be able to relate to all that happens in this play.

On some levels, the themes of this work are ubiquitous now in nonprofit American theater; this year’s Tony winner for best musical, “A Strange Loop,” focuses on a very similar character’s relationship to dominant Black and majority culture, albeit later in life, and you can stream many a progressive piece lamenting authoritarian educational institutions. And, yes, you intuit at the start of “Choir Boy” — when the headmaster (played with a kind of worried sadness by La Shawn Banks) instructs the boy that manhood inherently involves repression — that Drew will not be the happiest place for Pharus, a hyper-positive kid who knows exactly who he is but inevitably is thrown in with those who do not.

But McCraney is a poet, not a moralistic ideologue or a political propagandist happy to play to the choir. His vision in this piece is strikingly inclusive and warmhearted, suffused as it is with compassion for all struggling teens, especially during high-pressure transitions to college and adulthood.

He even introduces a teacher, played by William Dick, whom you expect to be the standard-issue old white racist (the audience even reacted that way at first on Saturday), but he turns out to have a similar heart to the playwright.

None of that is to say that “Choir Boy” stints from its beliefs, especially its conviction that self-obfuscation leads only to personal strife and that those who fear their own sexuality can often turn into unconscious aggressors (I recall). And it’s astute in its exploration of how young Black men can feel pressured to to achieve, often in terms that are, in part, a legacy of our shared racist past. But the piece is also affirmative and, as with so many great plays, it is mostly concerned with flawed but decent people who did not create the past and who are all doing their best to survive in the present.

The work has had an interesting history. Written a decade ago, it played mostly regional and smaller houses (I first saw it at Raven Theatre in Chicago) before a pre-pandemic Broadway stand in 2019 greatly raised its profile. The play has been revised and updated a little and now feels very much of the present.

The cast of mostly young performers — Richard David, Gilbert Domally, Samuel B. Jackson — is uniformly strong. Aside from Hardwick, who is riveting, there’s also a deeply kind, gentle and warm performance from Sheldon D. Brown, playing a young gay man’s straight friend, in the truest sense of that word.

What I didn’t expect (with all due respect to Raven) was the beauty of the music in the show now, especially when sung at this level. Singing has always been a rarity on the Steppenwolf stage and I’d forgotten how well the mainstage responds. I’ve suffered through some lousy sound mixes of late at shows downtown and the audibles here, designed by Pornchanok Kanchanabanca, are superb, as is the set from Arnel Sancianco, featuring portraits of great Black leaders, staring down on the next generation, a tad ominously. Especially if you see them everyday.

The excellence of this production is a reminder of what Gash can do as a director. He’s not well known in Chicago, although I remember watching quite a lot of his work some 20 or 25 years ago at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. This is a beautifully staged show — only the very last, rushed moment doesn’t quite work — that is brilliantly cast, excitingly staged and filled with the heart that comes from age. Worth 95 minutes of your time, friends.

Review: “Choir Boy” (4 stars)

When: Through July 24

Where: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes

Tickets: $20-$98 at 312-335-1650 and www.steppenwolf.org

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