Teatro Revoluci?n, a self-described "activist" theater troupe, attracted a larger audience than the Women's Studies Research Center could seat for their performance last Friday of Amiri Baraka's controversial one-act play, Dutchman. The play takes place in a subway car, empty at first except for a well-dressed black man, Clay (Sheldon Best '08), reading a newspaper and minding his own business. As the train pulls into a station, Lula (Sandha Khin '07) gets onboard. Wasting no time with introductions, the two characters dive into conversation, allowing first impressions and assumptions to guide their racy exchange. The shamelessly flirtatious Lula catches Clay off-guard with her uncannily accurate assumptions about his personality, first implying (though later refuting) that racial and gender stereotypes are reliable indicators of character. The relatively small room in which Dutchman was performed did not provide adequate space for the large audience it attracted. Both actors' faces were blocked from a large portion of the audience; I resorted to sitting on my feet for the show's duration. The set was altogether unimpressive, too, merely consisting of rows of plain chairs. Fortunately, the dialogue and energy of the actors would have been impressive in any venue.

Khin dominated the first half of the play. Her performance was fearless and energetic, and she made excellent use of the constrained performance space. Affecting a loud, piercing voice and a high-pitched, obnoxious laugh, Khin expertly crafted an unlikable character who, frankly, I wanted to gag. She displayed an excellent understanding of her character's nuances and, through brilliant facial expression and body language, allowed the audience to read her thoughts as well as the direction of the scene. Her gaudy and revealing costume, designed by Barri Yanowitz '06, fit Lula's character perfectly and aided in the audience's understanding of her exhibitionist personality.

Best gave an equally impressive performance as Clay, jumping from the role of victim to aggressor and, quite suddenly, back to victim by the end of the show. In the first act it seemed that Khin character would be the driving force; Best's character expressed few ideas. Still, he played off Khin well, keeping excellent composure and seeming eloquence.

As the characters' relationship began to heat up, however, Best became much more talkative and passionate, eventually culminating in a climactic 10-minute monologue. During the sequence, Best used every inch of space allotted to him, invading the personal space of nearly every passenger aboard the train, holding the audience's attention as if by force.

The conclusion, in which an unassuming passenger (Lily Bellman '08) stabs Clay, was shocking yet awkwardly executed. The blocking was too subtle to relay the intensity of the attack.

Still, this deficiency did not detract from the play's message. The electrifying dialogue and passionate, uninhibited acting succeeded in making a strong moral statement about the ways that stereotypes can distract from true intentions and personalities. By the end, I was too consumed with pondering my own biases and assumptions to even notice that my feet-on which I had been sitting throughout the show-were numb.