Names and dates of death. That’s how My Tidy List of Terrors begins, in the dark with grainy photographs of murdered children projected onto a curtain upstage. A child playing with a boat, surrounded by a menacing circle of masked African tribal figures, plucks at our most basic instincts. There’s power  in playwright Jonathan Norton’s subject matter, but little subtlety in the presentation.

Dallas-based Norton relies on his chosen backdrop—the Atlanta child murders of the 1980s, during which at least 29 child were snatched and killed–to lend heft to an intra-racial class drama that would have actually been interesting enough on its own. When even murder seemed to fail him, we’re transported back to the days of the slave trade in Africa, when thousands of humans were snatched and sold.

Vara (Nadine Marissa), a poor single mother bent on keeping her 14-year-old son Ishmael (Joshua Darius Jackson) safe, accepts an offer from her affluent employers to live with them in Collier Heights (where, we’re reminded, Martin Luther King, Jr. lived) as a temporary refuge. Charles (Douglas Carter) is a pulpit-less preacher recently ousted from his church for his progressive views on baptism (among other things), and Gabby (JuNene K) is his wife, who went back to school to get her masters degree after she was cut off from her former social circle. Both are struggling to adjust, Gabby more so than Charles, but both remain devoted to their young son, Stevie (Timothy Owens II). Of course, tensions rise as soon as Vara and Ishmael move in.

Vara, we soon learn, is escaping more than just the perceived threat to her child. She’s escaping her own guilt and grief over the disappearance of Anthony, her cousin Reva’s child, overpowering emotions that again manifest in moments that are just a tad overwritten. We don’t have to rely on the nuances of Marissa’s expression; we’re practically smacked over the head with her mea culpa every time she starts feeling the twinge.

The overall result is a bit of a patchwork, at times powerful, but often flat and weighed down by clunky, repetitive dialogue that has the opposite of its intended effect.  Ambitious allusions to tragic moments in black history feel less a natural part of the play and more like the playwright’s conscious desire to write something important. The strongest scenes are smaller, and truer: when Ishmael and Charles discuss baptism and what it means to choose it; or the moment Reva (Renee Miche’al) and Vara reconcile and the guilt is temporarily laid to rest. All four actors, finally given room to work between the words on the page, shine.

Particularly telling, too, is the scene in which Gabby discovers that Vara has done the grocery shopping in her old neighborhood, because things are cheaper. The eggs are unnatural, Gabby says, the orange juice isn’t juice at all. Gabby demands that Vara give the food away or throw it out. She won’t feed it to her son. The cruel implication, of course, is that Vara is a bad mother, because that’s all Ishmael’s ever eaten. Dorothy, Vara’s friend in the ghetto, happily accepts the free groceries. Just as Dorothy  serves as a living, breathing reminder of where Vara came from, but where she no longer quite belongs, this bit of writing serves as a reminder that Norton is something of an unconventional local talent definitely worth watching.

Courtesy Photo (Credit: Melyssah Jade)