Go see Liberty City
I went to see Liberty City last night, April Yvette Thompson’s multi-layered, one-person account of her upbringing in the infamous Miami neighborhood during the chaotic 70s, told against a backdrop of the rise and fall of the Black Power movement, the Crack epidemic and the Liberty City Riots that led to Miami being declared a disaster area, literally and figuratively. Co-written and directed by an old friend of mine, Jessica Blank (The Exonerated; Almost Home), I went mainly to support her work but came away amazed by Thompson’s acting prowess.
I’ve seen a handful of one-person shows over the years — real ones by real actors, not the self-indulgent features-on-steroids many poets have put together* — and am always impressed by an actor’s ability to believably portray multiple characters with a minimum of props and costume changes, but in Liberty City, Thompson pulls off six major characters (and a few minor ones) without making a single addition to or subtraction from her attire to delineate them, relying soley on vocal inflections, body language and an amazingly expressive face that ages, de-ages and changes genders without ever missing a beat. Her story is a riveting one that weaves her family history with that of Libery City‘s into a 90-minute, intermission-less collection of increasingly emotional (though impressively restrained) anecdotes that lead to a conclusion that is simultaneously heart-breaking and hopeful, and more than a little bit timely.
