From Hartford Courant

By Christopher Arnott

Kyle Bass’ short intense play “Citizen James, or the Young Man Without a Country” brings James Baldwin to vivid life, not by chronicling his long list of achievements in the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, but by letting him be himself, sharing his struggles, goals and principles from when his life had barely started.

This remarkable one-person drama, at HartBeat Ensemble through Sunday, is set in 1948 when the young Baldwin, who had barely been published at that point, left the U.S. to live permanently in France. The play, starring James Alton, is part of the company’s “Baldwin Season.”

Without time traveling, omniscience or other theatrical cliches, Bass uses Baldwin as a vehicle to directly connect things he experienced and thought about over 75 years ago with extremely similar situations happening now. By extension, “Citizen James” demonstrates how little has changed since his time.

The play offers one obvious brief connecting link that announces its thesis. Alton enters smiling, acknowledging that it’s 2025 — “another long, long day in America” — and asking the audience to “breathe.” Then he smoothly shifts into being Baldwin. He remains in character until the final moments of the play.

Baldwin lists the disturbing names he’s been called. He described not being served in a Philadelphia restaurant. He talk of Black identity and queer identity. He contextualizes and clarifies his thoughts. “Don’t think I hate white people,” he says. “I don’t.” He is a compelling, convincing orator, which the play underscores by having him speak directly to the audience.

He speaks, and the crowd responds. “Somebody say ‘Amen,’” he insists, and somebody does. There is an extraordinary segment of the play that takes the form of a “Say his name” call-and-response, as Baldwin reflects on men from his own time who were murdered essentially for being Black. He speaks nearly two dozen names, then asks the audience to add some, and naturally George Floyd and Trayvon Martin are invoked, among many others.

Those who know of his subsequent career as a novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, lecturer and activist are aware of how much more hatred and misunderstanding Baldwin would endure. He died in 1987 at the age of 63, but this play is laser-focused on Baldwin when he just starting out as a writer, still finding himself and leaving for France, where he would live for almost 40 years.

Alton commands the stage, fueled and emboldened by Bass’ script and Baldwin’s spirit. Director Joann Yarrow breaks up the long monologue sections by having Alton run in place or brandish his suitcase or highlighting other suggestions of the long physical and spiritual journey Baldwin is embarking upon. “Citizen James” is lively enough, and short enough at 50 minutes, to not need much in the way of technical effects, but it has them anyway with giant projected photographs as a backdrop, recorded music and sharp sound effects like the breaking of glass when Baldwin speaks of protest or violence.

In a talkback following the Feb. 7 performance, Yarrow (who has helped shape this show since its earliest drafts) noted that only two lines in “Citizen James” are taken verbatim from Baldwin’s speeches or writings, the rest is paraphrased or a logical dramatic version of Baldwin’s well-known beliefs. Bass wrote an earlier play, “Baldwin vs. Buckley,” which presented the celebrated 1965 debate between Baldwin and the conservative writer/editor William F. Buckley in the opponents’ own words. This piece is more creative and more speculative, seeking to not only articulate the inner feelings of this great writer but also connect his struggles and insights to the world today.

“Citizen James” was originally written as part of a series of biographical dramas intended for high school audiences and produced by Syracuse Stage in Syracuse, New York, where Bass is the resident playwright and Yarrow is the director of community engagement. The play was later revised to be less of an introduction to this historic figure and more of a character study of, as Bass put it in the talkback at HartBeat, “a young man who doesn’t know what he’s going to write.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the life and world of Baldwin, “Citizen James” is the kind of introduction intended to make you want to seek out more about him and by him. If you know his work already, you’ll want to reread it now you know how relevant and vital it still is.