The issue of injustice towards blacks is consuming the theater as it is every other institution, so in the interest of avoiding another reminder that the United States in 2021 is a land consumed by white supremacy, I took myself to a comedy about black life, Chicken & Biscuits (which is at the Circle in the Square through January 2) in hopes of something light. The piece is to be commended for being different, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.
Written by Douglas Lyons, an actor turned playwright who has no previous writing credits worthy of note and says on his website that he “is drawn to telling Black and queer stories that illuminate joy,” the play looks at a quarrelsome family reunion prompted by the death and funeral of a beloved grandfather. There is no plot. The comic energy is meant to emerge from the contrast between urbane and urban: on one side of the family are stuffy, upscale, educated blacks in New Haven who speak standard English; on the other are colorful working-class types who communicate in a profane vernacular that keeps upsetting the intended atmosphere of piety and mourning. The posh blacks try to keep things dignified, but their low-class relatives keep throwing them off.
The genteel side of the family is personified by the dead man’s
