Collective Consciousness Theater Works It Overtime

There are fleeting moments in Skeleton Crew — playing at Collective Consciousness Theatre through March 22 — where time seems to stop. We’re in the break room of a Detroit auto plant, and though the noise of the factory is running outside, inside is where the action happens. Times are tough at the plant and the relationships among the people who work there are wearing thin. Conversations get had that can’t get taken back. Secrets are kept and then revealed. And then, at the end of several scenes, it’s just one character alone onstage — Faye, played by Tamika Pettway. The fluorescent lights blink out, and the set is bathed in blue, and the weight of the world seems to settle on Faye’s shoulders, reflected in Pettway’s worried eyes. What is she going to do?

Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morrisseau — who has previously had plays at both Collective Consciousness Theatre and Long Wharf Theatre — tells a classic four-people-in-a-room story about a modern problem in Detroit that resonates deeply with New Haven’s own history. We’re at the beginning of the Great Recession, and an auto plant in Detroit seems, even from the outset, to be winding down. Faye (Tamika Pettway) has been working at the plant for 29 years and has done seemingly every job in the place; she’s also currently the union representative for the other workers. This puts her in an interesting relationship with Reggie (Jason Phenix Hall), the plant manager; Faye and Reggie are childhood friends, and Faye helped Reggie get the job at the plant years ago. But their current professional obligations put pressure on their friendship — especially when Reggie reveals to Faye that the rumors flying around the plant are true, that the plant’s owners are planning on closing it fairly soon. Faye is trying to protect younger workers Dez (Stephen King) and Shanita (Betzabeth Castro); Dez has ambitions to start an auto shop of his own and is starting to chafe at his keen sense that his skills in the plant are being exploited, while Shanita has a baby on the way.

A romance may be blooming between Shanita and Dez. But Reggie and Dez are butting heads. Someone’s got a gun. Someone else seems to be sleeping in the plant at night. And the plant is plagued by a series of robberies: someone keeps stripping its hardware for scrap. It falls to Faye to try to hold it all together — to do right by Dez and Shanita, the children in her work family, and by Reggie, her old friend. But how can she do that when doing right by one can feel like a betrayal of the other?

Once again, director Dexter J. Singleton has taken on a drama that plays to CCT’s great strengths — its cadre of extremely capable actors and its ability to turn its smallish space into a pressure cooker. It begins with the set and lighting design by David Sepulveda and Jamie Burnett, who together create a space that is so convincing as a break room in an industrial space that it momentarily fooled this reporter when he entered the theater. In this space, the actors have the space they need to fill the room with their emotions, and bounce off each other. As the younger half of the crew, Castro and King have clear chemistry together, and just as clearly convey the hardships in their characters’ lives. Meanwhile, Hall and Pettway show us the depth and longevity of their characters’ friendships, and give us the fraying edges of their lives in the present. Act Two gives Hall his chance to dig deep. Pettway — tugged in opposed directions in nearly every scene of the play — expertly plays Faye as a woman who knows her situation has given her only a few moves left to play, and she has to play them well.

The way Morrisseau’s play documents the loss of manufacturing in modern-day Detroit stirs echoes of the closing of the Winchester factory a generation ago; New Haven can recognize itself in the story of Skeleton Crew. That the surprising ending isn’t nearly as dark or sad as the premise above might suggest is both a message about the resilience of people who have been dealt a bad hand, and a word of advice to the Elm City as it continues to develop: don’t leave anyone behind.

Skeleton Crew runs at Collective Consciousness Theatre, Erector Square (Building 6 West, 2nd Floor, Studio D), March 5 – 7, 12 – 14, and 19 – 22. Visit the theater’s website for tickets and more information.