In ‘Fire!!,’ Quintessence Theatre brings 1920s Harlem to Mount Airy

After the success of its world premiere adaptation of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Quintessence Theatre Company is back. In collaboration with the New Classics Collective, it’s now presenting the world premiere of Fire!! by Paul Oakley Stovall and Marilyn Campbell-Lowe.

The play seeks to reimagine the 1927 quarterly publication Fire!!, the first all-Black magazine in the country, as a stage production. Throughout the show, audiences are treated to staged performances of plays, stories, and poems by some of the great writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes.

Seeking to offer audiences a more immersive experience, director Raelle Myrick-Hodges begins the play in the historic Sedgwick Theater’s lobby, with performers in suits and flapper dresses. The 1928-built lobby throbs with life, making you believe you are in 1920s Harlem. Wallace Thurman (Kaisheem Fowler-Bryant), one of the editors of Fire!!, introduces himself and his fellow editors and explains that the night’s performances are part of a fundraiser to raise money for the magazine.

Zora Neale Hurston (Alicia Thomas) introduces herself soon after, but it’s hard to hear her over the rumbling of a wheeled platform stage being ushered into the lobby. This later serves as the train for the first scene of Hurston’s play Color Struck.

While it is admirable for Quintessence to use the Sedgwick in new and different ways, the echoing sound quality of the lobby leaves things feeling under-produced.

The audience eventually makes its way into the house. The theater’s arching pillars remain visible as a “backstage” space throughout the play — without the black curtains, this adds to the echo in the lobby.

Inside, the play continues, flipping between staged presentations of pieces that were published in Fire!! and the imagined drama of the editors hoping to appeal to patrons and fund the publication.

This invented drama is interesting but feels under-realized. For one thing, this is the actual conflict of the play, but all the action happens upstage of the “stage” and presents a myriad of sight line issues depending on where audiences are seated in relation to the pillars on stage. The audibility issues persist, making it difficult to hear actors, especially when they are fighting over any sound cues or underscoring.

The conflict of the play boils up when Thurman voices hesitancy toward presenting his lover Richard Bruce Nugent’s novel, which features queer characters. This conflict, while seeming to be the crux of the entire play, easily resolves itself within the performance of Nugent’s story, and is barely addressed later.

The behind-the-scenes tension, which is the through line of the plot, feels almost forgotten by the time the house lights are back up.

The staged presentations of works from Fire!! are, however, alive and well-executed.

At a time of extreme political division, it is important to celebrate joy — especially Black joy. It is timely to witness Quintessence recall the Harlem Renaissance and its resistance with fondness.

The stagings are ripe with music and dance. Xavier Townsend, who plays Aaron Douglas, in particular dazzles the audience with high kicks and spins, and Jordan Fidalgo’s Helene Johnson blows the audience away with her musical rendition of Johnson’s poem “A Southern Road.” The poems of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Bennett speak for themselves and are well orated by Nicholas Parker and Taylor J. Mitchell, respectively.

Quintessence and the New Classics Collective are, as usual, impeccable with their selection of source material. The selected works from Fire!! are dynamic and fascinating stories that investigate the issues of the 1920s and today.

Audiences seeking to hear works of the Harlem Renaissance will be overjoyed by this production, if a bit confused by the subplot.

(Community/Arts)

The story of the country’s first all-Black magazine, and the fight to keep it afloat, gets told in this 1920s Harlem Renaissance-set play. With Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes making an appearance, Fire!! is a celebration of Black joy and resistance, and a delight to witness.

⌚️ Through Nov. 2, 📍 7137 Germantown Ave. (Mount Airy), 🌐quintessencetheatre.org

Theater reviews are produced independently by The Inquirer without editorial input by their sponsor, Visit Philadelphia.

The article has been updated with the correct name for the actor who plays Aaron Douglas.