Pipeline

Pipeline is playing at the Mitzi E. Newhouse located at 150 West 65th Street. The play runs ninety minutes with no intermission. It closes on August 27, 2017.

Nya (Karen Pittman) is a teacher in an urban inner city public school. Her only child Omari (Namir Smallwood) is attending a private boarding school.

Omari is involved in a confrontation with one of his teachers. He’s afraid he will be expelled from school. It seems both his parents sent him there so he would have a chance to have a better life. Omari feels he doesn’t fit in.

Nya is trying to cope. She is trying to reach Omari father Xavier (Morocco Omari). They are no longer together.

Meanwhile Omari is with his girlfriend (Heather Velazquez). He told her he is running away. She is trying to talk him out of it. Her parents sent her to the school for the same reason.

Nya spends time in the teacher’s lunch room. Laurie (Tasha Lawrence) just had work done on her face. She is telling Nya the issues she is having with her students. The security guard Dun (James Lincoln Smith.) come in to eat his lunch. He flirts with Nya.

As the play goes on we learn more about the characters and surmise why Omari feels the way he does.

Things come together when we meet his father Xavier. He is supporting his son financially not never sees him.

This is a deeply moving play. It is worth seeing. The only thing I didn’t like is they made statements like Xavier hints that Nya might have cheated in him when they were married but it’s not said. They will say something and you have to make your own conclusions.

The light dim when the set changes, the stage hands takes things off and put new things on to indicate a new location. When we are in the school a projection on the walls make he seem like you are in a hallway of a high school with students walking around.

The cast does an incredible job. Karen Pittman so convincing, you can feel her pain. Heather Velazquez acts and speaks like a street wise Puerto Rican kid. When you speak to her she is far from it. She does a great job.

Review by Rozanna Radakovich

Photos by Annazor.

To read a candid interview with the cast, scroll down the left for recent photos. Click on a photo, then click back to album and finally click back to gallery, for this and other shows.