Unfortunately for Reggie, he has to hold onto the secret burden of knowing what the future holds. A task he doesn’t seem to have the disconnection for. He knows the weight of that knowledge, as well as what will happen if those he supervises slip up and don’t follow the handed-down printed-out rules. It’s the crew elder, Faye, he turns his heavy heart to, and as played by the ever-so-solid Phylicia Rashad (Broadway’s A Raisin in the Sun; NYCC’s Sunday in the Park…), the alignment makes sense, even before we learn their packed-up history.
Faye, herself, is trying hard to hold on as best as she can, even as she knowingly falters, balancing her role as the Union Rep and knowing she has only one more year to go to get to her thirtieth anniversary in the company. Thirty years, she states, will bring her a much better retirement package than just twenty-nine, but she likes to break the rules, without really batting an eye towards Reggie. There is shame and rebellion in her eyes, and Rashad does an outstanding job sneaking it all in and around the room she inhabits.
Faye feels secure in her position as a strong worker and the longtime union rep. It gives her a righteous status that emulates from her worn-out body. Her powerful frame has seen some hard battles, but her understanding of her present-day situation is unraveling before her eyes. She knows her place and the factory as if it is her living room, and maybe it is in a way we are at first blind to, like all the others, but her devotion to the supervisor Reggie is clear and becomes more defined with each revealing moment those two masters share the stage together in this perfectly well-crafted tale of the unraveling of this corner of America we don’t get to bear witness to that often.
This is classic Americana, played out against the dingy walls of a doomed factory in Detroit. It’s an old news story that we all know well, and feel immediately connected to the uncertainty of that time post-pandemic. The secrets and subtle relationships unspool before our eyes, filling the air with deliciously orchestrated banter and well-understood fear and gossip. Economic hardships sit heavy on these folks, something that we can feel today, with the options of a better future feeling dimmer as the days go forward. Suspicion, theft, and guns are unpacked and sometimes discovered, and the world Faye once knew seems to be vanishing and foreclosing from right under her feet. We feel catastrophe is awaiting them, and with only a Skeleton Crew standing around them, their security and safety are now the questions of the day.
Sacrifice is at the heart of this Skeleton Crew, as is a tough sense of realism, loyalty, and loss. This is not one of those feel-good sentimental plays, crafted to manipulate our hearts, but one detailed in truth by Morisseau to showcase strong alliances of strength and complications. Adams, Dirden, and Boone deliver the goods spectacularly, capturing our attention in their desire and hope, even as fear lurks around just outside that break-room door. But it is Rashad’s Faye who draws us in deeper, unleashing a character that is haunted by her past as her present shakes her from the ground up. “Your philosophy is halfway comforting,” as Skeleton Crew solidly creates a sobering and powerful portrait of camaraderie and survival, pounded out on the line, in the writing and direction, as economic destruction seems to be waiting out in the cold, trying to freeze them out. We stand by them, with hope in our pockets as we all look to the future.
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