By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A Lesson Before Dying is an important book with an important message about what being black in America has meant and too often continues to mean.

Ernest Gaines' novel, set in 1948 Louisiana, is about an innocent man facing the electric chair and the teacher who is recruited to help him face his death like a man - because it's the only way poor blacks can stand up to the white power structure. The teacher is, of course, the one who learns the real, long-lasting lessons.

If only Romulus Linney's stage adaptation had the energy of the book. At Ensemble Theatre, Lesson talks and sermonizes, and remains literary rather than theatrical. In performance it isn't a page-turner.

Issues still reverberate

There may be half a century and hundreds of miles between Bayonne and Cincinnati, but headlines about the wrongly convicted and death with dignity are subjects that always resonates powerfully.

As directed by D. Lynn Meyers, the production buckles under the weight of its social conscience. It didn't help that on opening night Lesson was far from persuasive in terms of believable relationships.

Demond Robertson, considerably better than he was earlier this season in Blue/Orange, returns to ETC as Grant Wiggins, the teacher who wishes he were anywhere else but the rural shack of a school where he can't get through to the students and chafes at the respect that must be paid the racist whites who control the parish.

Robertson is better on the externals. He needs to let us see more of Grant's building self-awareness - he's a prisoner, too, although he has the ability to free himself - to bring the big pay-off at the end.

Malik El-Amin is Jefferson, the barely educated innocent found guilty. After being dismissed at his trial as more animal than human, Jefferson is acting like one as Lesson begins.

Meyers brings El-Amin along on his journey to manhood much too quickly - there's never a question that he's going to do the right thing and that kills the pay-off, too.

Their series of meetings are in a storeroom of the local courthouse, strewn with wooden crates and dominated by a large, empty square high overhead representing a window to the world Jefferson will never enter again. Scenic designer Brian Mehring experiments with slide and video projection not completely successfully.

Deborah Brock-Blanks, who is always at her best harnessing rage and misery, is Jefferson's aunt; Iriemimen Oniha is Grant's girlfriend, who isn't as fleshed out as she needs to be.

Fracher shines in role

It's Drew Fracher in the small supporting role of the all-seeing and understanding deputy who demonstrates how to create a character's inner-life.

Artistic director Meyers used opening night to announce that the regional premiere of off-Broadway hit The Exonerated, monologues based on interviews with former death row inmates, will open Ensemble's 2004-05 season.

A Lesson Before Dying, through Feb. 15, Ensemble Theatre, 421-3555.

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com