The creatively tireless artist and advocate for the oppressed Ishmael Reed has taken a bawdy slice of Black folklore— a toast about the sinking of the Titanic — and expanded it into a courtroom drama, a veritable trickster concerto, in “The Shine Challenge, 2025,”currently playing at the Theater for the New City.
Not many of even the best students of African American history can recall, let alone recite, the “Sinking of the Titanic,” which Langston Hughes revised and sanitized. “It was in 1912 when the news got around/That the great Titanic was going down.” It ends with “When all them white folks went to heaven/Shine was in Sugar Ray’s in Harlem drinking Seagrams Seven.”
In the afterword of “Black Fire,” an anthology written by Larry Neal and edited by Amiri Baraka, there’s a vivid stanza of sexual promise from the daughter of the ship’s captain, pleading with Shine: “Shine, Shine, save poor me, I’ll give you more … than a n***** ever see.” But Shine swam on.
This scene is integral to Reed’s play, and Jordan Barringer (Helen Smith), when she is called to the witness stand about her encounter with Shine (Brian Anthony Simmons), lets the audience (the jurors) know that she never made such an offer. “I would have died rather than have had him put his Black hands on me,” she said. “Shine, your witness,” said the prosecutor (Carmen Noelia). “No questions,” Shine said.
At the crux of the play and the trial is the accusation that the Titanic didn’t sink on that April night in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, but because of Shine’s negligence, who is defending himself in a kangaroo trial overseen by a judge (Malika Iman). She seems to derive pleasure sustaining the prosecutor’s objections. Even her barely audible aside with the judge before the trial begins indicates that the deck is stacked against Shine.
Not only does Reed use the injustice of the courtroom to mirror what African Americans have endured for years in this country, but he includes brilliant strokes of satire, political chicanery, lying, and misinformation to show how Shine’s conviction was orchestrated. Among the highlights of the drama is Shine’s challenge to the so-called perfection of the Titanic “that it may have been done in by structural weaknesses” — a direct reference to the original toast and boast by the captain that he had enough pumps to keep the ship afloat whatever the damage.
There were moments of absolute hilarity, particularly when the audience was prompted, in almost burlesque style, by signs from the bailiff (Audrey Shon) for when to laugh, applaud, and even boo. Monisha Shiva (the announcer) provided context and appearances by several witnesses (Jesse Bueno as Captain Edward Smith; Maurice Carlton as Jack the Shark; Rob Fulton as Jake “The Cat” Watson; Emil Guillermo as J. Bruce Ismay), all ably assisted in making real the racism and discrimination that may have occurred, if not on the Titanic, certainly elsewhere.
Only at the end of the play, in a heartfelt coda by Joy Renee LeBlanc, in a form-fitting slinky gown, did the audience know that Polar Bear Sam was portrayed by the play’s director, Rome Neal. He, as ever, kept the lines flowing and the play never sinking, but arriving and assuring, in Reed’s words, that “our writers can be like the monks who protected the sacred texts from barbarians.”
To learn the outcome of the trial, see the play, which will run at the Theater for the City until Feb. 16, 2025.
For more info, visit theaterforthenewcity.net.