If I Go Will They Miss Me

Last night I had another double feature at the Broadway (these are becoming a regular occurrence on Tuesdays) starting with If I Go Will They Miss Me.  This is an incredibly lyrical examination of the sometimes fraught relationship between fathers and sons and I really enjoyed it.  Anthony "Little Ant" (Bodhi Dell) lives in the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts, California, which is in the flight path of LAX so he has an obsession with flying as a result.  His father Anthony "Big Ant" (J. Alphonse Nicholson) has been in and out of prison most of his life so the only information he has about him comes from the embellished stories that his mother Lozita (Danielle Brooks) tells him.  When Big Ant returns home from his most recent incarceration, he struggles to reconnect with his son.  Little Ant is studying Greek mythology in school so he rationalizes his father's absences by thinking of him as Odysseus trying to return to Ithaca.  He also views himself as Pegasus because of his love of flying which makes his father Poseidon.  Big Ant is uneasy with his son's hero worship because he doesn't really know how to be a good father.  It is only when Little Ant sees his father for who he is that Big Ant is able to work to repair the relationship.  This uses magical realism to tell the story and it is filled with beautiful images.  In addition to the scenes evoking Greek mythology, there are many shots of the airplanes flying overhead (which represent adventure to Little Ant and the desire to escape to Big Ant) as well as shots of the current inhabitants of Nickerson Gardens to ground the fantastical narrative in reality.  Both Nicholson and Brooks give highly nuanced and powerful performances as flawed parents who are trying to break the cycle of generational trauma (their scenes together crackle with electricity) but I was most impressed with newcomer Dell because I found his sensitive performance to be very compelling (I had tears in my eyes several times).  I also liked a monologue by Myles Bullock, as Big Ant's best friend from childhood, in which he tells Big Ant to be the hero his son believes him to be.  This is a slow burn with a resolution that might be too ambiguous for some but I highly recommend it.