Suzzy Roche, Grace McLean, Alana Raquel Bowers, and Nina Grollman in Cold War Choir Practice (Photo: Maria Baranova)

Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice is a Reagan-era time capsule of 1980s nuclear threats, self-actualization cults, spies and toy fads (Pound Puppies!). Between eccentric songs about Christmas and Armageddon, this spirited play with music, is also about power, resilience, and Black community. With a winning performance from Alana Raquel Bowers, it is also a pathway into the mind of a young Black girl managing anxiety, family, and disappointment.

Set in Syracuse in 1987, 10-year-old Meek (Alana Raquel Bowers) is a member of the local Seedlings of Peace choir. This children’s choir is meant to somehow solve nuclear war through song, but, in reality, they end up singing an unexpectedly sensual song about Gorbachev (“Lay Down Your Arms”), an ode to Western capitalism (“The Farmer + the Businessman”) and a ditty about the milkshakes of cross-cultural friendship (“Milkshake for Peace”).

Meek is raised by her father, Smooch (Will Cobbs), who runs a local roller rink which he sees as a center for community. While her uncle, Clay (Andy Lucien), is a Deputy National Security Advisor to President Reagan negotiating the disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Clay is also a little stressed out to be juggling all that while managing a “situation” with his wife Virgie (Mallory Portnoy) who has just escaped a cult (or has she). Clay drags Virgie to Smooch’s house to try to leave her in the care of his mother, Puddin (Lizan Mitchell), who suffers no fools, least of all Virgie and her cult nonsense.

The choir of the title is literal. Nina Grollman, Grace McLean, and Suzzy Roche make up the on-stage choir (alongside Bowers at times). The trio shape shift between being children, holiday carolers, siren-like members of the cult, and covert Soviets. McLean leans into the ludicrous. Roche is more subdued. Grollman is hilariously malleable.

Reddick’s tone shifts from the lighthearted to the menacing to the sincere. There is a manic, off-kilter surface to the play with a serious struggle underneath for this Black family to negotiate life in America.

When it’s funny, it is a wild ride–we imagine the cast on roller skates in the roller rink, there is a delightfully cartoony moment with explosives, and there is a spelling and language toy “Speak and Spell” that communicates secret Soviet messages. But it was the truthful undercurrent that stayed with me.

Smooch and Clay fight like cats and dogs, but once they burn off the expletives and bravado, the pain that has infected their relationship becomes apparent. Smooch is a former Black Panther and Clay is a Black Republican. Smooch’s agony is that they were once were close and shared a view of the world. Clay’s embrace of the Republican political platform leads him to reject his past views on Black power and instead he ingratiates himself with this institutional (white) power instead. In a short play, and in just a few scenes, this brotherly dynamic unfolds with great care and impact thanks to Cobbs and Lucien.

Additionally, I liked that the play frequently gave us Meek’s perspective. As a child of the 80s, there was a specificity to her–foreign pen pals, the omnipresent Soviet threat, a sense of a world far away where everything was happening and maybe is better and happier than what she knows, and then domestic troubles that can eclipse nuclear war in your mind.

Through Bowers’ wide-eyed, direct delivery, she makes Meek’s efforts to build a fallout shelter as touching as her longing for a friend. And she is cutting when Meek grows up before her time.

Knud Adams directs the gifted cast and helps define this universe of geopolitical threats and localized inner turmoil.  Though there were moments that could be sharpened in the production with more time, the setting, the characters, and the meaning were clear.

The synchronicity in design was stellar. Red lighting (by Masha Tsimring), red costumes (by Brenda Abbandandolo), and red props allowed for multiple meanings including Christmas, Soviet, sinister all at once. The wood paneled set (by Afsoon Paoufar) with burgundy carpet screamed 80s living room.

Reddick pens the droll and inventive songs in the play. Will I be singing “No one has to die. Milkshake for a Soviet and I,” for a while? Maybe.