Hope VI

APPLE OF HER EYE Najwa Brown and LaDonna Tittle bear fruit.

Photo: Jeff Pines

Hope VI—an overhaul plan for perilous public-housing projects—certainly won’t live up to its name for Hope, age 6 (Najwa Brown), the child of longtime public-housing residents evicted by the scheme and forced to temporarily reside in a seedy South Side motel room. Hope has alternately doting and neglectful parent figures in her life. But her world is nonetheless rife with accusations of child cruelty and abuse, let fly by uncles, babysitters and housing officials alike. Due as much to parental neglect as to a poisonous, bureaucratic atmosphere that anticipates violence, Hope retreats into an exclusive relationship with her TV idol, Whoopi.

Hope’s great-grandmother, Messiah, shows Kelley’s work at its best; she has the endearing qualities of any fiercely maternal caretaker-in-the-rough. Messiah’s just one of several multilayered portraits that represent righteousness without sanctimony, probing the utilitarian ethics people craft under thorny circumstances.

Kelley regrettably matches these delicate renderings with a thick dose of heavy-handedness. Next to carefully wrought Messiah, Queenie’s a poorly matched ball of unrelenting rage. A skillful portrayal by DuShon Monique Brown (no relation to Najwa Brown) can’t compensate for two out-of-left-field plot twists launched by Queenie’s violent outbursts, which leave Hope feeling as emotionally exploitative as a Lifetime yarn.

• More theater reviews
• More Theater articles