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Gratitude, Celebration, & Possibilities - The Reviews are In
…Funnier than most serious plays and vastly smarter than most funny plays, Daniel Beaty's Emergence-See! is the most intriguing new show of the season. Its premise is inspired: On a clear blue day in 2006, a slave ship appears in New York Harbor. At the Public, on a stage scarred by shattered timbers, the actor-playwright teases out all the provocative consequences of its arrival.
Beaty tells stories within stories, all loaded with heart. You may think you've seen a lifetime's worth of poetry slams, but watch what rich use Beaty makes of one here, how exuberantly theatrical the result is. (Beaty has a flair for the big crescendo, drawing ovation after ovation—it's like a magic trick that gets you every time.)
The unique virtue of Beaty's play is how seamlessly his interest in a personal embrace of personal history shifts to take in the national embrace of national history. Is the ship a blessing or an embarrassment? A source of guilt or of healing? Are reparations the answer? His view is at once genuinely universal, in the sense that we are all, like that ship, in the process of emerging into the world, becoming more fully ourselves; and pointedly topical, as when he attacks blinged-out rappers who forget where they came from.
The leading playwrights who are now coming of age write about the world in a way that is engaged but not doctrinaire; their plays have a disabused optimism. With his unflinching readiness to contend with all voices, left and right, and his ability to be at once idealistic and tough-minded, Beaty gives reason to hope this may be the lens through which writers now in their thirties will view the world—and reason to wonder if his future plays will put him near the head of that group.
Jeremy McCarer – New York Magazine
…One would probably be hard pressed to find a more passionate new play in New York than Emergence-See! In addition to the fierce commitment and dynamic presence that Beaty puts forth in order to perform to this ambitious project, his text is centered on his driven belief that contemporary African Americans have lost the ability to come to terms with their shared racial history in America.
Director Kenny Leon has aided Beaty by reinforcing Beaty through various technical means, creating an overall sense of stunning theatricality.
Matt Windman – am New York
…Daniel Beaty's explosive, affecting solo play Emergence-See! may be the most important new American drama since Angels in America. In a taut, riveting hour-and-a-half, it paints a portrait of our particular political moment with astonishing incisiveness, revealing hidden or repressed truths and pointing optimistically toward a bright tomorrow that embraces bitter yesterdays and apathetic todays without being stymied by either. Beaty's a slam poet, and most of the characters in this extraordinary play are poets either by design or by nature or both; the words he gives them to say hearken back to ancestors as diverse and encompassing as Kushner and Hansberry and Shakespeare and whoever made up the story of Goldilocks. On top of that Beaty's performance as no few than 35 different characters in Emergence-See! is a tour de force of the highest order. This is acting and playwriting of the deepest humanity; as far as I'm concerned it's a show everybody ought to see.
Beaty's work is breathtaking in giving voice—so many voices—to people who don't often get a chance to speak to us from the stage. We discover history lost or deliberately obscured, and we discover a present that's subject to the same fate; if only for placing the invisible and the unheard centerstage, this is significant theatre.
But there's even more going on here, as Beaty connects to what's in every human heart, a refrain that's been sung since suffering began.
Beaty, just 30 years old, is astoundingly wise, and this play of his is loaded with his potent and visionary wisdom. Go see it.
Martin Denton – nytheatre.com
…I found myself won over by the sheer energy and charisma that ceaselessly emanates from the gifted and dazzling Mr. Beaty's performance.
It's a fantastical tale to be sure, but what is has to say about the need to connect with the past, as well as with the realities present, is not only valid, but often uplifting. In addition to Beaty's talents as a mimic—employed to give life to a whole gamut of disparate characters—he also possesses a rich and resonant baritone voice which he uses to fine effect throughout the evening.
Beaty is such a vibrant and electric presence. So, even if you've grown somewhat fatigued of the entire solo performer genre, nevertheless make your way down to the Public Theater to check out this entertaining show by the dynamic and dexterous Mr. Beaty. He's a real talent to watch.
Margo Channing – BroadwayWorld.com
…Though only 80 minutes long, Daniel Beaty's Emergence-See! contains enough characters, ideas, ambition and poetry to fill a performance twice its length.
Leon's staging helps separate the characters and clarify the script's meaning, but it's Beaty's performance that carries the positive, appealing energy from one character to the next. His ability to mimic so many different characters is remarkable—with each character given individualized accents to facial tics. Even more impressive, is Beaty's deftness at both writing and performing slam poetry. He wraps his voice around these vibrant, intricate poems with charismatic full of life intensity.
Emergence-See! is unabashedly successful—funny, thoughtful, evocative and moving.
Julia Furay – CurtainUp
…You might think any show that begins on a slave ship would have nowhere to go but down. But when Daniel Beaty appears on one at the very start of Emergence-See!, his acclaimed solo show that's now found a berth at The Public Theater, all bets are off. His singing an ethereal spiritual in a richly resonant baritone jolts you to attention with the possibility that this show might take you places others of its ilk would never dare.
That it maintains enough individuality to glitter prominently in a crowded month of openings is a tribute to Beaty's writing and performing talents.
Matthew Murray – Talkin' Broadway
…There may be a lone figure onstage, but the new theater piece Emergence-See! boasts a cast of characters rivaling the biggest Broadway musical.
Daniel Beaty, the show's writer and performer, plays more than 40 characters in this socially charged show about the impact of slavery on the African-American psyche.
Under the direction of Kenny Leon, the charismatic Beaty assumes all the roles in rapid-fire fashion, switching instantly between characters old and young, male and female, straight and gay, American and African. His chameleon-like performance, especially the skill with which he shifts his vocal tones, is highly impressive.
Frank Scheck – NEW YORK POST
…Heads up if you're near the Public Theater. The energy pouring out nightly could knock you off your feet. Its source is Daniel Beaty, and he's performing his one-man, multi-character show called Emergence-See!
The show begins with a slave ship rising up from the Hudson River in front of the Statue of Liberty. Beaty uses that event to launch into a passionate and funny exploration of black life, past and present.
Over the course of 80 minutes, Beaty plays 40 characters—men and women, young and old, rich and poor, straight and gay—who comment on the event in the harbor. They're all connected in some way and end up revealing various points of view on the black experience.
With just a shift in his body language and his voice, Beaty conveys the essence of each character. He weaves together poetry, drama-filled monologues and songs to address everything from homosexuality and racial profiling to AIDS. He uses his voice like a finely tuned instrument, ranging from booming low notes to delicate upper register.
Beaty constantly prowls the set with endless energy. He is mesmerizing.
Joe Dziemianowicz – DAILY NEWS
…Emergence-See!, is a rousing, bruising panoply of being black in New York.
This piece has language on its side. Mr. Beaty's slam poetry background exposes itself in swoops of lyricism, but the richer stuff never overstays its welcome. In fact, the text often works most confidently in his shortest strokes. Mr. Beaty has a pitch-perfect musical—even operatic—ear. Not only does he pepper the piece with lovely snatches of gospel and doo-wop, but he knows how to give himself bravura set pieces without interrupting his dramaturgical rhythm.
His many victories in the world of slam poetry situates him comfortably in a familiar vein: Those swinging Def Comedy Jam cadences have wormed their way well into the popular consciousness. But Mr. Beaty, while keeping the form's upbeat messages of selfhood front and center, is surprising because of his dramatic sympathy. He may always talk about being truthful to a self, but his real "truth" lies in his gracious negotiations between multiple, contradictory, messy—a very city of—selves.
Helen Shaw – The NEW YORK Sun
…Daniel Beaty unfolds the premise of his energetic solo show Emergence-See! in its first minute: A 400 year old slave ship from Ghana has suddenly arisen from the Hudson River and docked near the Statue of Liberty.
It's a striking, immediately telling image, worthy of George C. Wolfe's impish but pointed The Colored Museum.
And the spectrum of reactions Beaty portrays – embarrassment, exhilaration, disbelief—handily probe the still-unpurged ancestral memories of African-American, and index how far the race has, and hasn't, come since the Atlantic passage.
Beaty is a compelling, fired-up figure, with a shaved head, close-set eyes, and a stirring voice. His apparent specialty is the hip-hop "slam" poetry he offers under the guise of a Harlem poets' café. Some are brilliant set pieces that could be lifted from the show without much damage.
Rob Kendt - Newsday
…In Daniel Beaty's electrifying one-man show—Emergence-See!—Rodney, a poet, describes the pain of black American and a culture that was historically denied its identity. The pain, he says, is "in so many of us sleepwalking these street in an unconscious state of emergency."
This unconscious state, and the disconnect from one's true identity, is what Beaty unabashedly attempts to tear down in Emergence-See!—a lyrically brilliant must-see from an exciting young artist.
Beaty frantically cycles through an array of characters, voices and dialects—stringing together monologues like beads on a necklace to create not just a story, but a community with divergent ideologies. His most affecting characters include a lovable little girl with health issues, a Jamaican man with a unique outlook on life, a hopeful prostitute and a diverse group of poetry slam competitors.
Under the direction of Kenny Leon, Beaty's impeccable sense of rhythm and flow seeps into every aspect of his ambitious production, including the lightning-fast transitions between characters and scenes. As he glides and dances around the imaginative, multi-tiered set—he maintains a constant sense of forward momentum and an urgency that hold the audience and refuses to let go.
Peter Santilli – The Associate Press
…Lady Liberty receives some unexpected company in the solo show Emergence-See! Minding her own business as usual in the middle of New York Harbor, standing solitary and symbolic, she see her status as a tourist attraction temporarily upstaged when a slave ship, submerged for hundred of years, suddenly rises to the surface at her fee.
The circus that greet this supernatural event spills across the stage of the LuEsther Hall at the Public Theater in the supple person of just one actor, Daniel Beaty.
Mr. Beaty's writing for his central characters is compassionate and precise, and the more briskly sketched cameos are nicely steeped in satire. Mr. Beaty is also a fine singer, and the performance is punctuated with brief musical interludes. He moves with the easy grace of a man attuned to the rhythmic impulse that links music and poetry.
The symbol at the center of Mr. Beaty's encounter between African-American and the ghosts of the past is a novel one. The notion of a phantom slave ship joining New York's armada of tourist attractions is provocative and funny.
Charles Isherwood – The New York Times
…As a speaker and singer, Beaty has control of an exquisite instrument, and simply listening to him is always a pleasure. Playing a host of characters who react to a slave ship that rises from Hudson Bay and settles in front of the Statue of Liberty, he remains as pure and powerful at the top of his impressive range as he does at the bottom.
Many of his creations are slam poets, and Beaty uses the form to build symphonies out of the rhythm of his words. The show is most exciting when he suddenly alters a poem's meter, volume or speed so it can suggest some new emotion.
Mark Blankenship - Variety
…An African-American college professor must come to terms with being descended from slaves. In a strange theatrical coincidence, this plotline is the fulcrum of two current off-Broadway shows: Tanya Barfield's Blue Door at Playwrights Horizons, and Daniel Beaty's stirring one-actor, multi-multi-character Emergence-See!
Unquestionably, Beaty is an extraordinarily talented performer—complete with a gorgeous singing voice—and his writing displays a complex mind, a very caring heart, and a deep soul.
Beaty has been blessed with a superb production courtesy of director Kenny Leon, who provides his star with just the right amount of motion to keep the proceedings involving yet not frenetic.
The ship's name, by the way, is Remembrance. How apt. Daniel Beaty is a name to remember, as is this vivid portrait of the African-American experience in present-day New York.
Brian Scott Lipton – TheaterMania.com
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