Joan Marcus
There are four very good actors on stage in James Ijames’ excellent play, Good Bones (Public Theater, to Oct. 27)—but the star of the show is the kitchen that gradually reveals itself to the audience from behind protective sheets. It is the soft grey, blandly, suffocatingly chic centerpiece of a home renovation of a well-off Black couple, Aisha (This Is Us’ Susan Kelechi Watson) and Travis (Mamoudou Athie).
That renovation is being efficiently masterminded by Black contractor Earl (Khris Davis), who soon forms a connection with Aisha as they grew up in the same housing project. Later, his sister Carmen (Téa Guarino) will join him to finish the last of the painting, and add another perspective to Ijames’ thoughtful, provocative writing.
Less raucous than Ijames’ Fat Ham, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and went from the Public Theater to Broadway, Good Bones features meditations on wealth, class, identity, and belonging, accompanied by the sound of an unquiet spirit. In both Fat Ham and Good Bones tensions are offset by the self-expressive joys of dance.
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