Edwin Lee Gibson transforms into comedian Dick Gregory in “Turn Me Loose.” (Photo by Margot Schulman courtesy of Arena Stage)
“Ever get the feeling that the planet is wobbling?” It’s a query Dick Gregory—the groundbreaking African-American comic-turned-civil rights activist—asks early into Turn Me Loose, now showing at Arena Stage. An audience poll wasn’t needed to confirm that most of us agree the world is careening far off course. Edwin Lee Gibson-as-Gregory poses the question in a scene set in 2017, the year he died here in the District at age 84. Donald Trump was elected the successor to America’s first black president a few months earlier. These two facts simultaneously cast a pall over this production and fuel its righteous anger.
Played with puckish glee and moral rage by Gibson, Dick Gregory is finally given his due and brought to vivid life in Turn Me Loose. Playwright Gretchen Law hopscotches forward and backward through his personal history and material. Gregory’s most famous bit, about moving into a white neighborhood, is but a single gem in this show’s riotous reenactment of a pioneering stand-up act.
Gregory’s work is replicated, in pieces, during Turn Me Loose. His comedy is a hilarious and razor-sharp blueprint for current late-night hosts such as Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, and John Oliver. A bit about Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” darkly mirrors Trump’s path to presidential victory, and the racist dog-whistling that’s become the stuff of daily news. The jokes, if you can call them that, grow ever more personal and political as the story progresses.
The brutal murder of Emmett Till—along with Gregory’s friendship with Medgar Evers, who was assassinated by white supremacists in 1963—causes the show to pivot from gallows humor to true pathos. Our protagonist’s life suddenly takes a different trajectory, one that’s more radical and authentic. Dick Gregory becomes a firebrand.
The transformation is remarkable, especially when dramatized onstage in this mostly one-man show (featuring a sidekick). Gibson is terrific as Gregory, young and old. There’s an ease to his performance, particularly when he casually interacts with the audience while seated on the stage’s apron. His shoulders, Atlas-like, support this entire endeavor. (John Carlin is good enough as his infrequent, shape-shifting interlocutor.)
Director John Gould Rubin keeps things starkly minimalistic, and most importantly, naturalistic. Turn Me Loose feels like a Netflix special beamed from the past. Arena Stage’s program references Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette in a foreword by Molly Smith, the theater’s artistic director. What an astute observation. Yes, Turn Me Loose is often uproarious. It’s also a resignation letter written to a comedic life, one penned with tears and blood.
Turn Me Loose runs at Arena Stage through Oct. 14, various times, $66-$115)
