Black Rep drama deals with the stigma of mental illness

April 23--Like Prince, who died this week, Donny Hathaway was a widely admired, multitalented musical genius. But when he took his own life in 1979, there was no great outpouring of astonishment and grief.

Hathaway suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. By the end, the 33-year-old artist was alone, alienated from family and friends and convinced that malevolent forces were trying to take over his brain to steal his music.

Kelvin Roston Jr. plunges into that frightened and frightening world in "Twisted Melodies," a one-man play about Hathaway that Roston both wrote and performs. Already a hit in Chicago, "Twisted Melodies" closes the season for the Black Rep here.

Under the direction of Ron Himes, Roston gives a touching performance that lets us know something is really wrong from the get-go. As Hathaway leans into a microphone, headphones over his floppy newsboy's cap, he complains of disturbing noises on the tracks. We can hear them, too. But the sound engineer (a disembodied voice) doesn't know what he's talking about.

We soon realize that the sounds are hallucinatory. But the terrified singer flees. For the next 90 minutes, we will share his fear as he holes up in a New York hotel room, beset by more rumbling noises and visual apparitions: the wallpaper, a brocade pattern projected on a screen, seems to move. There are lots of projections in this play, some too literal and some just cheesy. But alumni of Vashon High or of Howard University, Hathaway's schools, may get a kick out of seeing some familiar edifices.

Through it all, Roston keeps talking, maybe to imaginary angels or demons but effectively just to us, his audience. He shares memories of growing up in St. Louis with a stern, religious grandmother who made him practice his piano so he could serve God with his gift. (Coincidentally, Roston grew up here, too.)

More good memories crowd his recollection of student days at Howard, full of music and wonderful women, including both the coed he married and his frequent musical collaborator, Roberta Flack.

But the memories are increasingly interrupted by illness. We see Hathaway ransacking the hotel room to find "bugs" that aren't there, then re-enacting the way he frightened his young daughter when he was just trying to protect her from the demons. (Or from himself?)

And there's always music. This is not a tribute show, but Roston, an eloquent singer and musician in his own right, incorporates Hathaway's "twisted melodies" throughout, as he must to tell the whole story. Particularly effective: a song he wrote for the woman he married (apparently before they actually knew each other) and buoyant treatment of Hathaway's first hit, "The Ghetto." The audience gets involved in that one.

Roston is especially moving in a scene with Hathaway's medicine kit, frankly describing the hideous side effects of each drug he's supposed to take. Though they help his symptoms, they make his life unbearable. They steal his music, too. What kind of choice is that?

There is no choice, Roston explains in a powerful speech near the end of the play. He has no way to separate his musical gift from his schizophrenia. If you accept him, that means accepting all of him. It means acknowledging mental illness, not hiding it behind a wall of stigma.

This point no doubt will come up in the talk-backs that follow most performances. Hathaway's been gone for decades. But that stigma persists.

Judith Newmark --314-340-8243

Theater critic

@judithnewmark on Twitter

jnewmark@post-dispatch.com

___

(c)2016 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at www.stltoday.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.