It’s plenty to build a play on, but this one is from Dominique Morisseau, lyrical chronicler of hard modern realities, so there’s plenty more: Kenyatta (DeJeanette Horne) was jailed decades earlier for an armored-car heist, a crime he’ll describe as largely political, part of the Black Power revolution that he and Nina’s mother were faithful soldiers in before he got sent away and she spiraled into addiction. Nina (Tierra Burke), named for the musical sorceress whose songs so indelibly scored that era of struggle, works a game of her own, tag-teaming with her romantic partner, Damon (Shawn Sebastian Naar), in a multilayered street hustle that has nothing to do with sociopolitical ideology and everything to do with stacking up cash. And, like Kenyatta, Damon has a kid for whom he can’t be a full-time father to — a reality that can’t help but get under the skin of a woman raised by one parent unraveling in the other’s absence.
To all this, add a stack of letters from Nina’s mother, written during her father’s confinement but never mailed — letters willed to Nina, letters that scholars of the revolution are already pestering her about, letters that publishers will pay top dollar for, letters that reveal … what? That mystery helps drive the action of “Sunset Baby,” but it’s not really among Morisseau’s central concerns. More at issue: At what cost comes commitment to a cause? Can we ever really do right by one another when fighting the system demands breaking the rules? And who’s to be trusted when everyone’s a player?
Morisseau, a MacArthur “genius grant” fellow whose credits include an acclaimed trilogy interrogating pivotal moments in her Detroit hometown, as well as the book for a hit musical about the Temptations, knows that personal complexity enlivens historical inquiries, and even in this early effort (“Sunset Baby” was first staged in London in 2012), she writes with both poetry and melody in her fingers, so the cast of Deidra LaWan Starnes’s staging at the Anacostia Playhouse is called on to navigate tricky territories. Kenyatta speaks into a camcorder now and again, capturing admissions of uncertainty and arguments about intent in staccato confessions meant for Nina, though he can’t articulate them when the two come face to face. Naturalistic exchanges butt up against arguments framed in heightened language, which makes for a few uneasily calibrated moments, and onstage energy levels could be better balanced among the three performers, especially as stories are getting framed and stakes are getting set in the early going.
Once everyone’s in the same gear, though, the characters do connect — in ways both surprising and predictable, with results that may not quite be gratifying, but that represent at least a marginally happier end than you might expect.
Memories, it turns out for Nina and her mother and their two flawed men, can be shaped and shaped again, even decades after they’ve hardened into implacable resentments. And as they all reach something like a workable resolution, this intimate, intelligent production, playing out on a stage in a city where the guns and drugs can seem as pervasive as the politics and economics, comes to feel not just relevant but also pointedly timely. Impressive, that, and dispiriting, too.
Sunset Baby, through April 28 at the Anacostia Playhouse, 2020 Shannon Pl. SE, Washington. About 90 minutes without intermission. anacostiaplayhouse.org.
