Choreographers have often been masterful theatermakers, but few could have predicted that they could write (and direct) nonmusical plays with the intelligence and depth of Raja Feather Kelly’s The Fires. Kelly, who has made a name for himself mostly as a choreographer on musicals like A Strange Loop and Teeth, has crafted a time-jumping drama that relies on movement in a way that suggests a postmodern ghost story. It’s a remarkable playwriting feat.
The setting is a railroad apartment in Brooklyn that spans the length of the similarly narrow black-box space at Soho Rep (where the show opened Tuesday). Red dominates Raphael Mishier’s set design, from the wallpaper to the door and window frames to the appliances to the furniture and knick-knacks, which gives the entire show the lush, slightly unsettling look of an old costume drama or a Hammer horror film. The space is filled by our three protagonists, each a young gay Black man who occupies the apartment in different time periods and who move about the space simultaneously, unaware of each other’s existence.
Jay (Phillip James Brannon, mesmerizing in his oracular presence) is a writer circa 1974, scribbling into his journals and banging on his typewriter to produce a novel about Aphrodite, the goddess of both love and war who serves as both muse and tormentor. Despite entreaties from his lover, George (Ronald Peet), Jay has not left the apartment in weeks nor even bothered to shower or change his clothes — he’s decked out in the remnants of an old fashioned suit, undershirt peeking out of his unbuttoned shirt, tie loose around his neck while his pantsless legs reveal socks with garters. (Naoko Nagata and Enver Chakartash designed the costumes.) His creative drive borders on mental illness and his recitations become increasingly unhinged and prophetic as the evening progresses.
We also meet Sam (Sheldon Best), an agoraphobic, deeply depressed young man in 1998 who has holed himself up in the apartment after the sudden death of his father by suicide. Sam seems constipated with grief, spending much of his time poring through the many journals strewn about the pad that he searches for clues about his father’s death (and life) — while scribbling a few lines of his own as well. Meanwhile, his mother (Michelle Wilson) and younger sister, Rowan (Janelle McDermoth), descend with groceries in an increasingly urgent effort to try to pry Sam out of his solipsism.
Jay and Sam share the space with another roommate, Eli (the buff Beau Badu), a writer in mid-pandemic 2021 who seems similarly mired in depressive thoughts and paralyzed by the prospect of turning a longtime friend with benefits (Jon-Michael Reese, haunting) into an actual boyfriend. Since moving into the pad owned by his now-grown pal Rowan, he’s spent his time writing web essays, hooking up with delivery guys and Grindr dates, and occasionally getting together with Rowan and some others in his pandemic “pod” (one whose safety he’s compromised with all those booty calls). Oh, and he also flips through that cache of circa-1974 journals — mysteriously, Rowan never cleared them out despite renting out the place.
Kelly, who also directs the production, moves fluidly between the time periods (with an assist from Bryan Ealey’s lighting design). There are moments of intentional overlap that deepen our understanding of the characters and their situations. Mother Leslie, waiting on Sam circa 1998, remains seated on the sofa while pandemic-era Eli hooks up with one of his dates just to her right — and then her grown daughter Rowan plops herself down beside her in 2021 in the exact same pose, as she says, “I’mma just sit on the couch like my mom would always do.” Kelly’s unusual chronology also allows him to gradually parcel out necessary exposition — including the exact identity of Sam and Rowan’s father.
More importantly, he’s crafted characters who, despite their many surface similarities, seem remarkably individual and of their own time. The Fires is not flawless. There’s a bit too much repetition, particularly some of the sections with Leslie, and some moments are performed a bit too broadly or delivered too shoutingly. Many viewers may also be disturbed by an underlying romanticization of suicide — an idea that’s articulated by more than one character in the show but never directly challenged.
Kelly has a real sense of showmanship, from the use of contemporary song snippets (from Eli’s Spotify playlist) to otherworldly quakes that produce jarring sound effects and flickers to the dim lighting. In one remarkable scene, Maurice postpones going to Eli’s pod party to check out a movie, seating himself in the audience (Reese sat right beside me) and watching the play as if it was a film whose ending he just had to see though he sensed it would be tragic. It’s a fourth-wall-breaking moment that could seem gimmicky, but here it adds a layer of artifice to the dread that makes the play’s climax more manageable, or at least inevitable.
Despite all the foreboding, Kelly is not above granting his characters a reprise: the suggestion that the cycle of isolation and disappointment might at long last be broken. If not a happy ending, there is at least hope.
It’s an apt message for a stunning piece of theater. For hope burns eternal in The Fires.
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