‘…what the end will be’ Is Damningly Futuristic

It’s amazing how public sentiment outpaces settled American law on some issues — specifically in the evolution toward the approval of marijuana, abortion, gay marriage and assisted suicide. 

When Marsha Norman’s ‘Night, Mother premiered on Broadway in 1983, the concept of physician-assisted suicide hadn’t really evolved into a public issue. Seven years before Dr. Jack Kevorkian began making headlines, locking one’s self in a room with a revolver was one of just a handful of plausible but terrifying options. 

Even when ‘Night, Mother was revived on Broadway in a 2004 production that I saw starring Edie Falco, only one state, Oregon (1997), had a law affirming an easier and more dignified way.

Set in Atlanta and premiering at The Arts Factory in an arresting Three Bone Theatre production directed by James Webb, Mansa Ra’s …what the end will be uses the improbable to veil the impossible. Improbably, three generations of gay Black men, the eldest an ailing Vietnam vet, make up the prosperous Kennedy household, demonstrating that a healthy amount of infidelity can happen inside the closet.

Bartholomew, the 74-year-old disabled vet, is full of surprises. For one, he doesn’t care who knows he’s gay. In fact, he hasn’t since his wife’s funeral and regrets not coming out sooner. 

Despite his cushy salary fueling his swank lifestyle, Maxwell, the son, is still closeted at his job. That leaves grandson Tony a step or two behind his elders, for he remains closeted at school and on his football team.

We get the idea that Tony, notwithstanding his muscularity, continues at football only because it helps Dad keep his cover — and because Maxwell insists. If that weren’t irritating enough, we’ll find that Maxwell feels that all those perks and luxuries he can afford for his kin should elicit their gratitude and allow him to dictate how they behave. 

Max is a conspicuous consumer with a liquor cabinet that opens at noon and a 2021 Mercedes G-Class that he likes to show off.

Though Bartholomew can admit he wasn’t a great parent himself, Gramps is not too far behind his offspring in tech savviness. He has mastered the communications possibilities of his tablet in order to apply to PACCBI, The Physicians Advocacy Coalition for Choice and Bodily Integrity, for a prescription to obtain pentobarbital at his local pharmacy — a drug that even the teenaged Tony has to Google.

So a couple of points you can also Google: 1) PACCBI does not actually exist and 2) physician-assisted suicide has never been legalized in Georgia — or New York, for that matter. 

By the time …what the end will be opened Off-Broadway in 2022, nine other states had joined Oregon in passing the necessary legislation. Yet among the seven reviews I’ve scanned of that premiere, only one questioned the depth of Ra’s research. 

Even the hallowed New York Times, that renowned capital of fact-checking for journalists worldwide, whiffed on this one, reflexively giving credence to the impossible storyline.

Ra’s veil will probably still work on most people who get caught up in Three Bone’s presentation of this multigenerational cage match. For neither Tony nor Bartholomew are going to tamely obey Maxwell’s wishes, even if his cash did buy all the booze on the shelves, all the Afrocentric art on the walls, all the handicapped ramps for Gramps, and the Mercedes outside.

For me, the elephant in this swanky home remains: money cannot legally buy physician-assisted suicide in Georgia or 39 other states — including all seven bordering the state where this production is set. 

The three nearest refuges for Bartholomew would be Colorado, New Mexico, or New Jersey. Yes, “Dr. Death” Kevorkian may have won over public opinion, but the public has been slack in dragging state legislatures behind them. It would be very different, in the wake of Kevorkian, if millions had marched on Washington, carrying placards, and chanting “Let them die!” or “Let us die!”

To Ra’s credit, Tony corrects his grandfather on another misconception – one that applies even more forcefully to his closeted, corporate dad. “This isn’t 2005. Nobody comes out anymore. You just like who you like.” This prefaces one of numerous heated confrontations between Maxwell and those around him trying to get his head straight.

Non-Kennedys also gang up on Max, fortifying what plays out as a massive intervention on multiple fronts. The first to appear is Chloe, Bartholomew’s hospice nurse, given a nice added layer of Spanish warmth and moxie by Mariana Corrales. 

Among these macho men, she takes charge as soon as she establishes a station behind the couch for her patient’s meds and pins a dosage schedule on the wall.

Next is Maxwell’s husband, Charles, played with so much reason, patience and forbearance by Victor Kuchmaner that you would swear he was Canadian. He serves as a peacemaker among the three generations of Kennedys, a mentor to Tony, and a better dad than either of his elders. Very white, too, encouraging Maxwell to work out his “anger issues.”

If that were all, …what the end would surely descend hopelessly into Hallmark saccharinity. To the rescue, we have Tony’s gender-fluid boyfriend, Antoine. 

He does not simply emerge from the closet in all his crossdressing glory. Instead, he is stashed away upstairs in Tony’s bedroom to escape Maxwell’s predictable condemnation and disapproval.

In a stunning Three Bone debut, Steven Longayo makes it clear that Antoine is too dignified, self-assured and confident to remain hidden anywhere — and not at all intimidated by Tony’s dad. 

In his own sassy and insouciant way, he lays down the law as emphatically as Chloe does. Asked by Gramps what his pronouns are, Antoine quips, “He/him/his. But I also accept free/bitch/baby.”

Amid the sturm and drang of the Kennedys, we need Longayo early and he keeps delivering, aided in no small measure by costume designer Toi Aquila R.J.’s glittery handiwork.

Aside from Maxwell’s backwardness and Bartholomew’s futuristic exploits (vis-à-vis what’s possible), the Kennedys are beautifully written and superbly presented. 

About the only thing you can say against Webb’s casting is that they’re collectively so muscular and macho that they make Rod Oden’s classy set at the Arts Factory look a bit small. Indeed, the only ramp for Gramps is offstage.

Dionte Darko has to be beyond Ra’s expectations as Tony, for his resemblance to Will Smith is almost uncanny — and the playwright has him telling Antoine that he’s his Zaden Smith. 

Darko does not need to bulk up at all to comply with Antoine’s label for Tony, footballer Odell Beckham Jr. Whether it’s with Antoine, Dad or Grandpa, Darko perfectly calibrates the rapport between them.

Ra truly shines in his sensitivity to each and every interaction, but it’s with Marvin King as Max and Tim Bradley as Bart that the sparks really fly. There’s a scorched-earth history between them; we learn early on that Bart threw Max out of his boyhood home “right after high school.”

King is an interesting mix of sophistication and caveman, savoir-faire and anger issues. Not too much about him is subtle aside from the self-revealing moment when he asks his husband which shirt he should wear at his company’s Thanksgiving Day golf tournament. 

That’s how little Max gives in to how he would choose to look when not masquerading in his corporate suit-and-tie.

Ra brings Maxwell around a bit on his appearance in the turning point — with a bonus Antoine intervention — but here again King makes Max more believable than he is written.

And just how wonderful is it to finally have Bradley in his Three Bone debut after so many other Queen City triumphs with other companies? Seated in a wheelchair as Bart must be most of the time, he begins with the advantages of being the center of attention and the natural repository for reverence and sympathy.

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Bradley almost jubilantly plays against our sympathy and charity. He’s the Kennedy who immediately gets Antoine even better than his grandson does, showering as much praise on his gender-bending fairyhood as he does on Tony’s athletic brawn. Bartholomew is clear-eyed, courageous and encouraging as a born-again parent, grandparent and gay man.

Kudos go out to Webb for making Bart’s final moments more detailed, explicit and ceremonial than they were written. Brilliant work all around.

[Editor’s Note: On the day following …what the end will be‘s opening, Three Bone Theatre learned it would lose the $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant awarded to the company last year to support its run of the Luis Alfaro Trilogy, a modern-day retelling of Greek tragedies. Read the company’s open letter to the community about the funding cut here.]