Craig Wallace and Jeff Allin in Round House Theatre’s production of ‘Permanent Collection’.
Photo by Danisha Crosby

“You can’t be on both sides.” So says Sterling North (Craig Wallace), the new director of a private suburban art museum in Thomas Gibbons’ trenchant, provocative Permanent Collection. Sterling knows exactly which side he’s on, and so does his opposition, the museum’s education director Paul Barrow (Jeff Allin). The two are so far into their respective sides that they can barely see the middle ground, let alone one another.

The tension arises when Sterling, who is African-American, discovers a number of important works of African art in the museum’s storage. The museum has a number of similar works on display amid the scores of Cézannes, Picassos, and Renoirs that dominate the collection, and North feels there is room for eight more to come out of the basement. He seeks to put them in the gallery’s public collection, despite another stipulation of the will that dictates that not a single piece on display may ever be moved, replaced, or changed in any way. He initiates a discrimination suit to challenge the will, and Paul, who is white, stands in his way as the self-appointed defender of the founder’s legacy and vision.

What follows is a downward spiral of acrimonious bickering, particularly nasty name-calling, resolute stubbornness, and legal action. Neither man is willing to back down. Part of the wonder of Gibbons’ script is that even as he paints both of them as completely unreasonable men blinded by their convictions, he often allows them both completely valid and supportable points of view. As the two push and pull at each other, always oblivious to the effects of the one person stuck in the middle, North’s assistant and Barrows’ friend Kanika (Jessica Francis Dukes), the writer makes it easy to identify with both, either, or neither as the arguments wear on.