William King is dying from MS. His two twenty-something sons, Ennis and Malcolm, already lost their mother to cancer 15 years earlier and now must deal with his slow deterioration. To make matters worse, the King family is poor, or as they put it “broke” and faced with the difficult choices of a generation that is passing, a generation that is looking to take flight and the tension that comes when illness comes between them.
This is the nexus of the play, “Broke-ology“, which I had the privilege of watching last night at the Kansas City Reparatory Theater. The story, set in just across the state line Kansas City, Kansas, has come home to roost after first being produced at the Lincoln Center Theater.
I, of course, am no theater critic, but what drew me to this work of art was essentially the story of two young men and their father struggling with the notions of care giving, the end of life, and ultimately letting go.
You cannot understand the King family unless you understand where they live, which is to understand that they are a poor African-American family living in a rundown, dying (what appears to be) exclusively African-American neighborhood in Kansas City, Kansas. The elder son, Ennis’, theory about making it in this community “broke-ology” boils down to a simple formula of living on government dole, thriftiness, hard work, and pride in his own family.
But ultimately, “broke-ology” doesn’t get you very far when your father is dying of MS. William greets us in the very first scene before Ennis is even born, young and full of vigor, but by scene two, he comes lumbering down the stairs in bathrobe, slippers, and an eye patch (emblematic of his failing vision from MS). In a paradigmatic representation of health disparities in the African-American community, William and his sons understand very little about his condition. They refer to “his doctor” without name, “expensive medicines” without name, and talk openly about their ignorance about William’s prognosis, disease progression, and what will come next.
It is the eldest son, however, who has remained in the community (while the younger brother moved off to UConn to earn multiple college degrees), who has become the caregiver for William, giving him his multiple shots per day, reminding him about medications as his memory as failed. Ennis does this even as his own family obligations (a new wife and child on the way) have created his own burdens and struggles. Malcolm represents the paradigmatic son who returns home with much fanfare and glory and who interjects himself with much tumult into medical decision-making. In a gut-wrenching scene, Malcolm and Ennis scream at each other after a visit to an assisted living facility
“Broke-ology” is not a story about being broke, it is a story about dying. The children becoming the parent for their parent is a time old tale, but the nuance added with this African-American family gives the story some richness it might not have had otherwise. Where the play is weakest is in the development of the mother, Sonia, who appears sporadically throughout the play, but who does give William much of his soul. Her death and her life go largely unexamined, however, and this is a real shame.
But ultimately, the end of life-ology is a tale of a family making tough choices and William’s the toughest and most definitive of all. He cannot save his family from their broke-ness, but at least they have one last summer together. For most families with parents suffering from terminal illness, that is pretty much all they could ask for.
**SPOILER ALERT***: Broke-ology ends with William making a choice: the choice to end his life with a fatal overdose. The burden upon his caregivers is too much–so ultimately William gives Ennis and Malcolm the freedom to live their lives in the way that he could never could have or give his own wife. He would not condemn his sons to the same fate.
Sadly, what is left unexamined is whether William’s suicide and so many of his simultaneously sad and hilarious moments are the result of dementia, depression, or some other side effect of his MS. So many chronically ill patients, as we know, choose to end their own lives, not out of autonomous choice, but as a result of depression. The clinical facts are lacking in this play because the inter-personal drama seems to make them not matter.
Summer Johnson, PhD