Finding Home

Generational Curses. Hardly a single family is spared.

They are the inter-family challenges -- such as alcoholism, verbal abuse, violence or even mental illness -- passed down, from one generation to the next.

In “Finding Home,” directed by Jackie Alexander and currently running at the Billie Holiday Theatre, playwright Keline Adams takes a candid look at how the psychological scars from depression and mental illness have come to impact one family across three generations.

The play is set in modern-day New York and begins with Ella (played by Suzette Azariah Gunn) and her 16-year-old daughter Sunny (played by Brittany Erin) who are preparing to leave Brooklyn for Charleston, South Carolina, where they will stay for one month with a grandmother figure named Sylvia (played by Marcelle Gover).

From the opening scene well through to intermission, conflict -- mainly feelings of anger, sadness and abandonment -- is traded between the three women, as the story pieces together, slowly uncovering key occurences of the past.

The play examines the hard and painful process of revisiting your painful past in an effort to break the cycle: When did it all begin? What set it off? And what is needed to forge a clearer path ahead?

Sylvia’s best friend Nattie (played by Suzanne Darrell) provides moments of comic relief and levity where the subject matter might begin to feel heavy, while at the same time serves as "the wise counselor," a neutralizing character whose opinions are sound.

The play’s only male character, Dwight (played by Sidiki Fofana), is a 16-year-old do-gooder, who represents innocence, normalcy and hope. In be-friending Sunny, Dwight is able to crack her tough exterior. And because of this, his introduction, in a way, becomes the first spark that ignites change.

The play is well written, superbly casted and finely executed. Like a good book that succeeds in making you forget you’re in the act of reading, the play grows into a conversation you begin to have with yourself that feels entirely familiar.

Although the play’s “lead” character arguably was shared in equal parts with Erin, Gover and Gunn, Sunny’s character, played by Erin, emerged for me as the standout.

As the frustrated, foul-mouth teenager that you love to hate, her role seems ancillary at first. But she eventually emerges as the story’s anchor, as she represents the point where the famiy's cycle of depression finally pivots and changes course.

And she plays this important role with nuanced precision: She is tortured, sassy, often times rude, perceptive, smart and fragile.

Yet, in the end you understand 16-year-old Sunny and even root for her, as you realize she is a reflection-- an extreme, in-your-face measure of where we are as a society. And so you want badly to see her survive.

But more importantly, you want to see her survive unbroken.

“Finding Home,” runs through Sunday, March 31, 2013, at the Billie Holiday Theatre. Check the theatre’s website for times and ticket information