This 'Redwood' branches out with humor but is rooted in feelings

"Redwood" was worth the wait.

Nearly two years after shutting down during previews because of the pandemic — with its set sitting onstage ever since — Jungle Theater's production of Brittany K. Allen's dramedy opened last weekend in Minneapolis.

Director H. Adam Harris' smart and efficient staging unfolds on a candle-bedecked set as a frothy, over-the-top comedy in the first act and a touching drama in the second. Harris maximizes the humor before taking square aim at the heart.

He gets well-timed and nuanced performances from his cast led by China Brickey, who delivers a beautifully chiseled turn as lead character Meg. The show has a versatile Greek chorus that includes Dwight Xaveir Leslie, who also plays a hip-hop dance class instructor; Dana Lee Thompson, who also depicts family matriarch Alameda; Morgen Chang, who doubles a stepmom; and the inimitable Max Wojtanowicz, playing an insouciant barista and an old slaveowner.

"Redwood" orbits interracial Baltimore couple Meg, a Black teacher, and Drew (Kevin Fanshaw), a white doctoral candidate in physics. Always ready to start dancing together, these two hipsters are secretly shacking up to the consternation of Meg's mother, Beverly (Thomasina Petrus), a practicing Christian.

The couple's rhythms are disturbed after Beverly's fraternal twin, Uncle Stevie (Bruce A. Young), discovers that the youngsters may be literal kissing cousins: Drew's family owned Meg's family during slavery.

Playwrights are often among the world's deftest smugglers, slipping weighty matters into the theater on the backs of light comedy. Think "Tartuffe" and its withering attack on religious hypocrisy. Allen's play is less bracing, coming from a place of intimacy and love.

But its subject — the buried history around slavery that exerts a powerful though unseen gravitational influence on those walking above ground — is becoming increasingly popular and more personal as people use genealogical research to unlock family histories.

In "Redwood," such a pursuit undoes the stories that the families of Meg and Drew tell about themselves.

Talking to Meg in her kitchen, Beverly tells her daughter that Alameda, the family's founding ancestor, was from the Ivory Coast. Meg is wary.

"Apparently, these kind and decent people took her in?" Beverly says.

"Took her in? Mom!"

"Look, you need to give me a break, Little Miss Black Panther. Some kind and decent people bought her."

Historical frames also tie the tongue of Drew, who only knows that his family has done noble things for foreigners. As Uncle Stevie shows Drew his genealogical research in a coffee shop, the blood leaves his face.

"I don't wanna know any more," Drew pleads.

There's a lot of music in "Redwood," including songs by Bruno Mars used for a hip-hop class. But the song that could also have been used is Sister Sledge's "We Are Family." "Redwood" is named for the world's tallest tree and one whose roots are entangled with other trees.

The play's major nit is its false ending. The lovers also describe each other as their persons, which stands out because it sounds so studied.

Allen wrote "Redwood" after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Now the play has opened days after another traumatizing killing, this one of Amir Locke in downtown Minneapolis, just two miles from the theater.

Those bookends show that the voids that "Redwood" seeks to fill — including in knowledge and understanding — remain as urgent as ever.

'Redwood'

By: Brittany K. Allen. Directed by H. Adam Harris.

When: 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends March 13.

here: Jungle Theater, 2951 Lyndale Av. S., Mpls.

Protocol: Vaccine or negative test, along with masks, required.

Tickets: Pay-as-you-are ($45 recommended), jungletheater.org.