PicksInSix Review: KILL MOVE PARADISE TimeLine Theatre Company
“What’s everyone so afraid of?”
The names are haunting. You recognize several, but you quickly realize that you should know them all. The age of each one on the list. Who they were to their brothers, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and friends. And how they were viewed by others who knew and loved them before their lives ended in senseless moments of violence and rage.
Imagine a place where the souls of those dead go and you arrive at an intersection of life and death that is the setting for James Ijames’s explosive play, “Kill Move Paradise,” a transitory experiential drama set between the sudden trauma of violent death and the hereafter. Or, more accurately, that conscious moment between life as we know it—in a physical sense—and the point when our existence becomes eternal.
While you ponder that thought and wait for what’s coming next, imagine the tables turning. The observers at once become the watched. The judges become the judged and are now part of the story. You struggle to understand why the color of your skin makes a difference. You feel as if it were you who is marginalized, trapped on a slippery slope, bewildered, desperate and fearful of the future.
“Kill Move Paradise,” magnificently cast and directed by Wardell Julius Clark in its Chicago premiere, which opened Thursday at TimeLine Theatre Company on S. Wellington, is a startling, ambitious and innovative theatrical experience. Three men—Isa (Kai A. Ealy), Grif (Cage Sebastian Pierre) and Daz (Charles Andrew Gardner)—arrive at different intervals in the vortex of the moment between life and death as, through their interactions, explorations and experiences, they grasp for understanding of what it means to be black in America. That vortex is “Kill Move Paradise.” There are rules to follow while you wait.
And when Tiny (Trent Davis) arrives and asks, “What’s everyone so afraid of?” dynamics change and the sensitivity of the men, their relationship to the boy and to each other, transcends into an exhilarating and inspiring journey that ultimately bonds the men together, at peace with their pasts and futures—and with each other.
The creative team of Ryan Emens (scenic design), Jason Lynch (lighting design), Jeffrey Levin (sound design and composer) and Izumi Inaba (costumes) creates a rugged and fascinating space between life and death that is as imaginative as the characters inexplicably thrust together by hatred, violence and fate and who can only move on to salvation with hope, brotherhood and love.
PHOTOS|Lara Goetsch
Donovan Session appears as Tiny at select performances.
TIMELINE THEATRE COMPANY
presents
KILL MOVE PARADISE
through April 5, 2020
615 W Wellington Avenue
Chicago, IL 60657
(773) 281-8463
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For more reviews, visit: Theatre In Chicago
LISTEN to the 2019 CONVERSATIONS podcast with Cage Sebastian Pierre