Sunstone’s ‘Dutchman’ Gets Unflinchingly Close

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Sunstone Studios' 'Dutchman'

Sunstone Studios' 'Dutchman'

One of Milwaukee’s smallest stages serves as an early-1960s New York subway car in Sunstone Studios’ production of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman. Director DiMonte Henning keeps the drama unwaveringly close to the audience as a young white woman (played by Hannah Ripp-Dieter) confronts a young Black man (played by Denzel Taylor.) The two actors play two strangers in a complex and intricate interplay between class, culture in a deep dissection of race relations in the U.S. Baraka covers a great deal of conceptual ground between the two characters in the course of a single, relentless hour in a very intimate studio theater space. There isn’t much space in the theater to turn away from the intensity of drama Henning and company are presenting.

Colin Gawronski’s production design is streamlined and abstract. A simple wooden frame suggests a world outside beyond one man and one woman. There are others who move around the periphery of aggression and discomfort in the heart of the drama. Taylor and Ripp-Dieter are as fearless as they are nuanced in their portrayal of a couple of people trying to relate to each other as human beings. They happen to be one white woman and one Black man. There’s a hell of a lot of baggage tied-up in those two designations that they’re both forced to confront in a tiny tube deep beneath the streets of one of the most densely populated cities on the planet. Baraka’s tale of two people remains remarkably contemporary. Aspects of race relations in the US have changed, but Henning and company put together a presentation that speaks quite clearly to present audiences.

Sunstone Studios’ production of Dutchman runs through Nov. 19 at Sunstone’s space on 127 E. Wells St. For more information, visit sunstonestudiosmke.com.