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Generations of the Dead in the Abyss of Coney Island Madness
by Michael Henry Brown
Generations imposes itself upon you with
outrageous gestures and bold flights of language. It may be
the most corrosive and unsparing drama to emerge from the
pen of an African-American writer since the angry days of Ed
Bullins and Richard Wesley. ... it is this young man who
provides Generations with its thematic pivot: Cody
Cooper is the great black hope, the son of a former maid and
a one-time hustler who stashed their hard-earned money away
so that their children could have a better life. He is, in
short, the American Dream, and the ineluctable path of
Generations is that of the dream gone astray, as
Cody's resolve is slowly poisoned and eroded by the ghetto.
The corruption of the good kid is the stuff of great American pop mythology, and Cody's transformation from aspiring actor to gangster can be traced back to classic docu-melodramas like Caged and I Am a Fugitive From the Chain Gang. It is a telling measure of what we have come to that the prison locale of these old movies has changed to a Coney Island housing project; like these earlier works, Generations makes no bones about its social message, pointing a stern, warning finger at its audience for participating in a system that creates these ghetto prisons. "... I choose to call it dare-devil playwriting, brimming with the dynamic stage language and swaggering confidence of a writer in complete control." Jan Stuart, Newsday
Originally produced by the Long Wharf Theater, New Haven CT - single interior