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REVIEW

Guts and race – advertising illusions, class, social inequities all have seats on the bus

★★★

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
February 1, 2015
By CHRIS JONES

I’ll say this for Bruce Graham’s White Guy on the Bus, now premiering at the Northlight Theatre: It is a play with guts. This writer has previously been inclined toward sentimentality, as such sweet works as Stella & Lou and The Outgoing Tide attest. Not this time. The gentle first few minutes notwithstanding, this one is red, racially charged meat.

Consider this line: “Wanting to kill someone is the most natural thing in the world.”

Or this: “If Bernie Madoff had been dragged out into Central Park and hung from his neck until he was dead, and they’d shown it on CNN, then we wouldn’t need the SEC” …

I see so many plays that want to blurt out some of the things that these characters say but don’t have the nerve. This one goes for the jugular.

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REVIEW

Bruce Graham’s White Guy on the Bus sure to stir controversy at Northlight and beyond

RECOMMENDED

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
January 31, 2015
By HEDY WEISS

Bruce Graham’s play White Guy on the Bus, now in its world premiere at Northlight Theatre under the take-no-prisoners direction of BJ Jones, is an altogether incendiary examination of race in this country. And Graham says things that many other playwrights would quickly self-censor.

Ray (Francis Guinan) is an investment banker who makes rich people richer, and he would happily leave his job and unload his upscale surroundings — vast garden, pool and all the rest. His wife, Roz (Mary Beth Fisher), is a still attractive and driven woman who teaches at an inner-city high school where she is routinely called “bitch,” a term she can almost laugh at. And in a uniformly fiery cast, Fisher, who has many of the best lines, is particularly brilliant in her caustic, no-holds-barred exposure of how political correctness can poison rather than ameliorate the racial divide.

[T]he shattering second act … suggests how privilege and poverty, and matters of power and race, can become so combustible, igniting resentment, fear, escalating violence and tragedy.

Credit goes to Graham for his sheer chutzpah. And you can bet there will be some mighty heated post-show discussions for this play.

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REVIEW

Northlight Theatre’s new show confronts America’s problem with race
Bruce Graham’s White Guy on the Bus shows the toxic legacy of slavery.

CHICAGO READER
February 4, 2015
By TONY ADLER

Bruce Graham’s White Guy on the Bus demonstrates how completely f***ed-up we all remain as a result of crimes that only technically ended 150 years ago. Not that this Northlight Theatre world premiere is about slavery per se. As far as I can recall, the word never gets mentioned. But Graham’s 21st-century Philadelphians don’t need to talk about it any more than a fish needs to discuss water. They’re swimming in it …

And it’s in the fraught negotiation between Ray and Shatique—with its power differential, its edge of violence, its very American sense of race as destiny—that the modern resonances of slavery vibrate most viciously.

I wouldn’t have believed that Graham had this in him … White Guy on the Bus can be called tricksy and conventional and contrived and maudlin, and I’m probably betraying my standards by liking it as much as I do. Still, when the time comes to put up or shut up, it most definitely puts up.

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REVIEW

Northlight’s White Guy on the Bus a fiery examination of race

★★★

DAILY HERALD
February 6, 2015
By BARBARA VITELLO

White Guy on the Bus may not change anyone’s opinion on race. But Bruce Graham’s play, in its world premiere at Northlight Theatre, will most certainly ignite conversations.

The characters in this provocative, unflinchingly candid examination of race make some pretty shocking admissions, several of which elicited audible gasps from the mostly Caucasian opening-night audience. But it was the offhand comment from Ray, the titular white man, that stayed with me after the curtain came down on director BJ Jones’ combustible, powerfully acted production.

Sitting beside an African-American woman on a city bus headed toward the penitentiary, Ray, played by the always authentic Francis Guinan, comments on the racial composition of the passengers.

“No white people of course,” he says casually.

Barely audible, but loaded with class as well as racial overtones, the comment reveals a prejudice so deep-rooted Ray doesn’t recognize it in himself. Even people who ought to know better aren’t immune.

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REVIEW

Modern revenge tragedy is brutally honest but fascinating

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

CHICAGOCRITIC.COM
February 2, 2015
By JACOB DAVIS

Northlight Theatre’s promotional materials keep the details of its world premiere play, White Guy on the Bus, under tight wraps. It’s something to do with racial tension, revenge, and a white guy riding a bus. Going into further detail than that would give away some crucial surprises that would detract from the excitement of seeing a brand new play, but might possibly persuade some people for whom that brief description does not provide enough information to arouse their interest to give the work a chance. So what I’ll say for those wishing to read no further is that the play is about much more than one location, and contains arguments over racial perspective that are all the more upsetting because of how sympathetic the characters on both sides are.

Most important to the show’s success are Guinan and McClain’s performances. Guinan’s Ray loves the people close to him dearly, but is a masterful manipulator when he’s not overcome with rage. In one person, you see both the dedicated family man and the cutthroat businessman-turned avenger. I’ve enjoyed Guinan in roles as a bumbling hero and a comedic villain, but he’s equally engaging with this dark character. McClain’s Shatique is also a clever warrior for her family, but I was not bothered by her initial agreeability toward Ray. She has rage of her own, yet for now retains her morals. The power struggle between these two is so painful because they hold nothing back in their condemnations of each other’s entire lives and personal character, and they both make strong cases. It requires some theatrical magic to get these two talking to each other at all, but that’s forgivable because of the drama that contextualizes their dialectic. Graham’s play doesn’t exactly say we’d all be better off if we did that, but it certainly says we’re no good where we are now and where disingenuous oversensitivity has us headed.

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PREVIEW

Northlight’s White Guy on the Bus sparks crucial conversation

PIONEER PRESS
January 15, 2015
By MYRNA PETLICKI

[Director BJ] Jones admitted, “It is challenging. I know it invites conversation – which I think is important right now.”

The play has become even more timely than it was when Jones chose it. “Ferguson was not on the horizon or Staten Island or Cleveland,” he noted. “That timeliness is serendipity but the truth is that the conversation should always be on the front burner.”

He described the structure of the play as “theatrically surprising” because scenes are not in chronological order.

“This show is a perfect social response to all of the racial and social/economic clashes that we’re having in our country right now,” [actor Patrese D.] McClain said. “It is so timely and appropriate. It really does ask the question, ‘What lives matter in this country?'”

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PREVIEW

World premieres highlight local theater scene in 2015

DAILY HERALD
January 7, 2015
By BARBARA VITELLO

Also at Northlight, the world premiere of White Guy on the Bus (Jan. 23-March 1), the play about the unlikely friendship between a successful white businessman and a struggling African American single mother written by Bruce Graham (The Outgoing Tide).

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PREVIEW

Top 10 Plays to See This Winter

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

December 31, 2014
By CHRIS JONES

I’m anticipating with particular relish … White Guy on the Bus: The world premiere of a new play by Bruce Graham that probes the friendship between a successful business executive and a young single parent who is struggling to make ends meet. Artistic director BJ Jones, who has worked with Graham several times before, stages this drama with a stellar Chicago cast, including Patrese D. McClain, Mary Beth Fisher, Amanda Drinkall, Francis Guinan and Jordan Brown.

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