The One + Only for the One Man Show

It doesn’t help that my obsession with Fonz was planted and rooted well before this. He stole my heart as a shining light on Katori Hall’s “P-Valley” and again when we were in attendance of the Black Love Gala that hosted so many beautiful couples from and friends of the show. J. Alphonse Nicholson has a calm rumble in his spirit. It lowers its voice and places a humble hand over heart when you remind him with everyone else that he’s brilliant. He offers better lighting and location for the picture that you’re stuttering to ask for and his gorgeous wife beams beside him like an angel.  Y’all know what good people feel like. Even with all of that glory shining on him, his brilliance in acting, stage presence, delivery, should be studied at Harvard.  He really is brilliant, and we got to see him on the closing night of his critically acclaimed sold out show, “FREIGHT: The 5 Incarnations of Abel Green”.  Eat your heart out. 

This striking ensemble, composed of but one man and written by the talented Howard L. Craft kicks off when our star boards a freight train and takes us on a journey that begins in the 1910s and propels us through a century of Black life in America for Abel Green. Five unique people (and their counterparts at times) through a quick train ride express to us some of the beauty but most of the damage that has come from the American experience. Every Abel found great wealth after great trials, but even when they’d won there was a layer of the type of regret that coats the tongue. Once you’re steady with the flow of the show, that bitter flavor stays until it erupts, one life after the other, familiar characters and cadences making this an experience for each guest. Each Abel showing us his joy before his pain, each reconciling their truths, each animated flawlessly by Nicholson.  

In the early 1900s we got a proud darkie, a minstrel performer who’d rather be on this side of the white man’s hate. Craft beautifully paints how their eruptions of laughter as they gather in rows to watch the Black face that needs no reapplying, is no different than their bursts of sneers and the entertained eyes that watch lifeless bodies hang from trees, smoking their cigarettes to the buds in their supposedly post-racial America.  In the 1930s, after a devastating loss, Abel Green is an unassuming cult leader, or more appropriately “the instrument of god” who is traveling the south laying hands, making the meek to walk and the blind to see, before realizing his truth and asking for forgiveness.  Abel is a snitch ass, bitch ass, FBI informant in the 60s, who got paid to give up the Black Panthers before meeting his demise. In the 80s Abel Green is minimally famous, a struggling actor who we learn left his best friend, the only man he ever loved and a pivotal help in his career, the moment he learned he was gay and potentially HIV positive.  Our final Abel is an articulate and well-off mortgage broker, from 2010, who after a painful and violent realization relinquishes all of his wealth to the families he’d hurt and decides to take refuge as a houseless vagrant in the park before ascending this place altogether and elevating to Saturn.  (did she just say that?.... I did.) 

The sci-fi ending, for me, was all I needed to make this an A+++, however I know for other folks it left so much to be desired.  What does that mean? That there’s no escape for Black people in America?  That our only way out is to ascend this place altogether? There’s also something to be said about the amount of masking that must be done to exist in this space, so much that our last Abel left his life in full and smashed cans to make a spaceship; each Abel a little off his rocker, but still as profound and revolutionary as the last.  

The way that Nicholson glides in and out of the characters, quite literally, with only the help of one stage hand that is as much a part of the show as he is, is glorious.  Once the show starts, an ethereal Black woman presents as the whimsical concepts of time and transition, preparing the set and the star for each incarnation. She was captivating in her own right, a goddess almost, dressed to be death and life, time and the tangible fact that it doesn’t exist at all. So much of this show really forced me to look at each stereotypical concept with new perspective and empathy.  Nicholson, tears flowing or lip biting or hymnal belting or train jumping, presented those 5 monologues with a passion and fever I’ve never been close enough to the artist to experience so deeply.  It was moving and raw and righteous - and when it was all over, he was kind enough to bow his head at us and pat that humble hand on his heart, his gratitude obvious and abundant.  

Like Denzel’s tucked lip and Sam’s “motherfucka”, I can imagine Nicholson’s bowed brow becoming a staple in our homes for years to come, so long as Black people want to continue to loose the shackles we’ve had on for too many years. I’m eager for more. Thank you for everything you brought to the stage last night, J. Alphonse. It erupted something inside of me to at least see my passions all the way through, wherever they might take me.  Take us all.  

<3 SK

Thanks for taking the time to read this review. Please like and leave a comment to help pump up my ego! My love language is words of affirmation. =)