[rating=2] It isn’t often that I see a theatrical production where I become lost in what they are saying, or how they are trying to get there, but tonight. At Pride Arts Center’s Chicago Premiere of “one in two”, it happened. What started out as a clever concept, became tedious quickly. As we entered the theater, we saw three men on the set. By the way, the set is three storage boxes where they keep their props. Before you start writing to me about the title, I will tell you that this is intentional and is the way the playwright, Donja R. Love meant it to be!
Back to the play. It is an autobiographical story that Love created to get the message out as follows: One in two Black men in America who have sex with other men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime”. This is staggering and mind-boggling. Many will not believe this! Others will want to know how this can be stopped.

Playwright Donja R. Love brings this statistic to life through the story of one character – a young man named Donte who is diagnosed with HIV. The play follows Donte through his experiences in a bar, the bedroom, a waiting room, a medical office, and in his childhood. One of the three actors that we meet at the outset of the play will be Donte’ , and guess what? We select him! Yes, we vote picking which actor will play #1, #2 and # 3. Each will put on a T-Shirt with a die on it indicating their number, and number 1 is in fact, our “hero”.

I was okay with this part of the play despite a lot of use of the “N” word ( which is overdone as far as I am concerned), and of course, as we meet each performer we also meet their alter-egos and learn a great deal about them.

Tonight, J.Xavier played #1. He was strong, but I found the script taking us in many directions and there was some confusion, at least for me. Anania Williams was number 3 and the third member of the crew, #2, was played by Jonathan Samuel Allsop ( his characters were all unique and he stood out in every character he brought to the story).

Directed by Jordan Ratliff, I understand that he was trying to create a message. Part of what made the play hard for me was that the actors were not wearing microphone’s and even with my hearing aids on, it was difficult to hear some of the dialogue. For some reason, young actors are not trained to reach to the last row of seats and the director, evidently did not try different seats to check them out. This is an intense message play where the audience NEEDS to hear the message!

On the tech side, there is no real set, just the boxes I mentioned and the back wall is a screen where we see numbers constantly growing. Are these the numbers of newly infected men? In the beginning it seems they are in a waiting room and they are taking numbers to be seen, so the numbers should be going down until they get to be seen. They are rising, which I found confusing. The lighting had a few opening night flaws, which I am sure they will work out

This is a tough subject to go after and due to the subject matter there are some intimate scenes that may bother some audience members. I tell you this to prepare you for what you may not expect in a play.

“one In two” will continue thru – Mar 19, with performances as follows: