As A Soldier’s Play — running now at the Shubert Theatre through Dec. 11 — opens, a group of faceless and as yet nameless soldiers join in a song. Their performance is full of strength, energy, even joy. But the song is a work song, captured at Parchman Farm, the notorious maximum-security Mississippi State Penitentiary, in which inmates were made to work in conditions all too reminiscent of slavery. The parallel is clear: these Black soldiers in the U.S. Army, at (the fictional) Fort Neal in Louisiana, deep in the Jim Crow South, are in some sense prisoners, trapped and laboring under a crushing system of racist oppression that they are in no position to be able to change. Though this being the Army, they do have the chance to be promoted in it, if they follow the rules and don’t make too much trouble. So what happens when one of them, Sgt. Vernon C. Waters, is shot to death under mysterious circumstances?
The original run of Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play won a Pulitzer in 1981 and was made into a movie (A Soldier’s Story) in 1984. A Broadway revival in 2020 was cut short by the pandemic, but won a Tony for best revival anyway. Ultimately undeterred, Roundabout Theatre Company returned to the play (with a different cast), holding technical rehearsals at the Shubert and now opening it there as the first weekend of a 20-week tour. As in decades past, New Haveners thus get to be the first to see a vital piece of American theater, a murder mystery full of urgent performances that also forces its audience to confront some of the ugliest aspects of racism in America, asking hard questions that, sadly but importantly, have lost none of their potency in the four decades since A Soldier’s Play was first staged, and in some ways, since the era in which the play is set.
In the play, Captain Richard Davenport (Norm Lewis) is a Black lawyer and officer in the U.S. Army assigned to investigate the killing of Sgt. Waters (Eugene Lee). As soon as he arrives at Fort Neal, he is confronted by Captain Charles Taylor (William Connell), the commanding officer of the platoon, who is unapologetic about how uncomfortable he is about having Davenport investigate the crime. Taylor’s opening salvo is an encapsulation of Fuller’s deft writing: Taylor’s stated reasons for his discomfort are that he is (probably rightly) concerned that Davenport will face such an uphill battle from White authorities that the investigation will be stymied. But it’s clear from the start that Taylor is wrestling with racism of his own. He’s perfectly comfortable commanding Black soldiers from a position of authority. He has absolutely no idea how to deal with a Black person as a peer, an equal — let alone a superior.
Taylor’s complexity is just a warm-up for what’s coming. As Davenport investigates the killing, he gets to know the other soldiers in the platoon, who have their own tensions among them yet are united in seeing the Army base, and the surrounding Louisiana countryside, as a place that’s so oppressive that they yearn for the relative freedom that open combat in Europe might offer. More viscerally, a portrait emerges of the slain Sgt. Waters as a Black man who has become so invested in the Army that he has fully internalized its inherent racism, even more than Taylor has. Waters preaches a toxic message that is a kind of horror-show version of Black uplift, even as he confronts the more virulently racist White soldiers at Fort Neal. As Davenport’s investigation continues, it becomes clear that several people on the base could have motivation to kill Waters. The questions of the play then plunge deeper: what justice is served in properly figuring out who did it? And who is served by it?
A Soldier’s Play isn’t just an essay about racism, however, in part thanks to the production’s uniformly excellent performances. Norm Lewis’s Davenport is a steady hand as the audience’s guide through the hornet’s nest of Fort Neal; he’s shrewd and strategic, knowing when to be ingratiating and when to take a stand, to find out the truth of what’s happened. Connell excels as a man trying to navigate his way out of the racist maze he finds himself lost in. Each of the soldiers has his time to shine, especially Tarik Lowe as the outspoken, unafraid Private Melvin Peterson and Sheldon D. Brown as the amiable and deeply tragic Private C.J. Memphis. The banter between the soldiers — vital, vivacious young men — offers a key balance to the heavy subject matter and to the seriousness of the investigation. As the deeply problematic Sgt. Waters, Eugene Lee has the toughest job. His performance is riveting and uncomfortable in the best sense; even as he says some of the most hateful things heard on a stage around here in quite some time, Lee convinces us that his character believes he’s doing the right thing.
The play works as a satisfying police procedural, but like the best mysteries, the investigation into the crime itself is a journey to exposing larger, deeper, and tougher social truths, about the greater injustices lurking behind criminal and legal victories, and about the way a system built on racial oppression has a way of infecting everyone within it. In the context of the double hindsight the play offers — it’s 2022, and we’re revisiting a play written four decades ago about an era four decades before that — A Soldier’s Play asks a contemporary audience to investigate how far we’ve really come since the days of the deeply segregated Jim Crow South. Sure, some things have changed. But it’s possible that if we dig a little deeper, we won’t like what we find.
A Soldier’s Play runs at the Shubert Theatre, 247 College St., through Dec. 11. Visit the theater’s website for tickets and information about show times.