Once in a while a play comes along that fires on all cylinders and “Detroit ‘67”, currently playing at the Long Beach Playhouse, is absolutely one these gems.
Set in the “Long, Hot Summer” of 1967, the 1967 Detroit riot, also known as the 12th Street Riot and the Detroit Uprising, was the bloodiest of the urban riots in the United States at the time.
The tension and flaring tempers outside the basement doorstep of sibling protagonists Chelle and Lank is only the backdrop to the impasse inside; Lank is a dreamer willing to risk their parent’s inherited savings on starting a bar with his best friend Sly, while Chelle is the more practical of the two who flatly refuses to gamble everything that their parents had worked for.
Rounding out the conflict at home and the neighborhood just beyond the door are Bunny and Sly, charismatic and funny, yet sympathetic when the moment calls for it.
Everything seems to be going according to plan until Lank and Sly take pity on a confused, wounded woman from the street named Caroline and bring her into the basement. The only problem is that Caroline is white, while Chelle, Lank, Sly and Bunny are black and in the urban powder keg of the play’s setting, the potential for an explosion is there.
