It’s too bad, then, that Amerikin seems a blueprint for a more insightful comic drama, heavyhandedly welding two plays together to form an intriguing but unsatisfying one. (The first act is “Inside Out,” and the second is “Outside In,” which explains it all.) We first meet Jeff Browning (his last name a bad pun) of Sharpsburg, Maryland—near where the Civil War’s bloodiest battle, Antietam, was fought; he’s a blue-collar stiff who wants to give his newborn son a head start in life by taking a genetic test to show his purity so he can join a local white-supremist organization, the Knights. Complicating things are Jeff’s wife Michelle, who suffers from extreme post-partum depression, and next-door neighbor Alma, Jeff’s girlfriend before he married Michelle. 

 

Jeff discovers his DNA isn’t as pure as he thought, and the play’s first act ends with a cross burning on the front lawn just as the family is leaving to celebrate Jeff joining the Knights. Jeff’s friend, computer whiz Poot, successfully fudged the results but Poot’s latest girlfriend, daughter of one of the group’s leaders, saw the original report and relayed the truth about Jeff’s ancestry: 14 percent sub-Saharan African. 

 

The second act introduces veteran Washington Post columnist Gerald and his daughter, aspiring journalist Chris. Gerald saw a Facebook post from Alma about how Jeff’s life has been ruined by these events and decides it’s a perfect subject for his column: a white racist isn’t white enough to join a racist organization. So Gerald reluctantly brings Chris along for the drive to rural Maryland (Chris says to her father, “You think I’m letting you go into Confederate territory by yourself, black man?”) to meet Jeff and hear his side of the story—about which he isn’t entirely truthful.

 

Amerikin traffics in narrative contrivances and cardboard characters. There are shrewd observations and sympathy for everyone in the play, however loathsome they may be personally, but even though there’s much to be said for creating dialogue and bridging differences, there are too many stereotypes, easy jokes and “shocking” moments like Jeff naming his black dog the N word, of all things, or Michelle singing a lullaby to her newborn that goes, “Lullaby and goodnight/Shoulda had you aborted.” Then there’s a suicide that happened a week earlier, which could never be covered up in such a tiny living space. 

 

Director Jade King Carroll has trouble making it all cohere, but Christopher Swader and Justin Swader’s lively set of Jeff and Michelle’s home—replete with Trump-Pence stickers on a refrigerator filled with Miller beer—and Jen Caprio’s spot-on costumes ground the caricature in an identifiable, and sadly real, America. And though the actors are constricted by the script, Daniel Abeles makes Jeff a likable dope and Molly Carden takes the impossible role of Michelle—who isn’t given much to do except cry and rage, while her ultimate fate occurs offstage—and winds her so tightly and tautly that she deserves a more thoughtful play to bring out her character’s fascinating contradictions.