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Then the young choir lead halfway cocks an eyebrow and adds, For the Lord, at least.
Bobby is a sulky petty tyrant carrying around personal grief and hurt.
And Pharus is just too big a person to take up less space.
Not that hesoutper se: Dont gay mean to be with another man?
Youseen[me do] that?
he quips to his sympathetic roommate AJ (John Clay III).
Sick of people calling me something I aint doing.
That is the resistance … Those are the maps and guides to the Promised Land.
Not to cross some man-made border but to find a place in our hearts that felt like peace.
Pharus isnt just expostulating hes arguing.
Pick a theory, a well-known theory, and challenge it, Mr. Pendleton has told his students.
And true to his nature, Bobby starts to boil.
The songs arent literal, he argues what they are is right there in the name.
They arent slave escape double-oh-seven plans but something deeper, longer-lived, more ephemeral and more transcendent.
Its how they make it through daily uncertainty and shame and suffering.
Its what takes them out of themselves.
It is, as it was for so many others before them, survival for the soul.
Its performers and its music keep it flying, like a bird circling in a powerful updraft.
When he or David or Bobby sings, theyre no longer frightened, fronting kids.
Theyarethe music, and for a moment, they are free.
I, I,Itook the blows, in my face, and my body!
Alison cries seemingly out of the blue, dramatically quotingAStreetcarNamed Desirein a later Bible-study session.
As shes quick to point out, Alisons not an addict.
At least, not in the traditional sense.
Theyve metastasized, so.
All she can do is, act out those feelings, by um.
By destroyin … Destroyin this mans car …
I literally did that to someone, whom I love very much … Id like to see her in a Greek tragedy.
And shatteringly ashamed and lonely.
Rosebrock doesnt let any of them leave unscathed.
An lotta times what we want most … Thass what makes our big sins flare up.
Rosebrocks unsentimental insight and the ensembles raw fearlessness make it sting, and Ireland makes it stick.
Choir Boyis at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.Blue Ridgeis at the Atlantic Theatre Company through January 26.
