Review: Riveting ‘Fannie’ captures pain, power of a civil rights icon

Although Fannie Lou Hamer has been gone from this earth 46 years, one of her many puissant perspectives still holds true for millions of marginalized people:

“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Despite the cruel and crushing devastations that Hamer suffered through a lifetime of freedom fighting, her literal and figurative voice comforts and heals, letting people know that in her heart, she still loves everybody.

Turns out, an angelic voice possessed by a dynamic stage actor is the perfect way to bring a little slice of heaven down to earth.

“Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer,” running through April 2 at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, is mesmerizing, leaning heavily on the star power of transcendent talent Greta Oglesby. While there are plenty of moments that accentuate the inhumanity of the Jim Crow south in Cheryl L. West’s passionate script, there are others that portray Hamer’s disarming powers that manage to heal others, when she herself probably needed healing more than anyone. Despite West’s script not staying in one place for long, both the hope and hopelessness of her life and times are captured succinctly throughout the 70-minute runtime.

Director Tim Bond and Oglesby are reunited here after last having worked together in TheatreWorks’s production of August Wilson’s phenomenal “Gem of the Ocean” in April of 2022. That collaboration bore harmonious fruit, as does this one, with Oglesby portraying the civil rights leader and voting rights crusader whose every devastating scar and gaping wound crafted from courage is revealed.

While Bond’s direction emphasizes maximum engagement with the audience, it is the radiance of Oglesby that allows the piece to soar to the heights it does. Every scintillating moment in Oglesby’s solo performance reveals not just pain and devastation but the joy found within spiritual hymns that lean on God when the viciousness of earthly existence proves too much to bear.

Oglesby’s musical take on Hamer’s legacy is guided by a delightfully taut three-piece band which includes Spencer Bean, Leonard Maddox Jr. and music director Morgan E. Stevenson.

Hamer, a former Mississippi sharecropper and the youngest of 20 children, saw her life end at 59 after battling multiple health issues, plenty of those accelerated by horrific beatings which were the price of speaking truth to power. Her approach to catching bees was to use honey instead of vinegar, but that doesn’t mean she hesitated to use her own sharp stinger when needed, wielding it with ferocity mixed with empathetic pleas.

There’s a moment when Oglesby as Hamer has some pointed words for the white women in the house. She applies a firmness to her voice, but appeals to the connectivity between them, “…’Cause a white mother is no different than a Black mother. We cry the same salty tears. Under this skin we bleed the same red blood.”

While the scintillation of Oglesby’s melodic register can induce waterfalls at any given moment, intricate moments of horror and suffering are assisted mightily by Andrea Bechert’s scenic design, with Miko S. Simmons’ phenomenal projection work and Gregory Robinson’s sharp soundscape laying out the literal pain Hamer endures. The metal bars of incarceration slam with barbarism while memories of brutality linger hauntingly near. In these fraught times, only her calling to God keeps her marching forward, believing that those she fights with and fights for will overcome.

During moments when Hamer is being beaten by five men in a prison, each sickening slap heard loud and clear, all Hamer can do is sing to the promised land as her world crumbles. “Oh, Lord, we sho’ do need you now,” Fannie croons with composure, in a most profound understatement.

The devastation does not let up; Oglesby’s Fannie tackles every high and low, losing friends, fellow fighters, even a child, revealing the icon’s unshakeable faith that would make Job envious. She is the witness to an incessant series of burials, but never loses her conviction that what will change the fortunes of an unjust world is the right to vote.

Despite the various nadirs of the searing narrative, Oglesby makes certain to accentuate her turn with a superfluity of joy, humor and hope. In recent times, perhaps, it’s easy to wonder what there is to be hopeful about, but as Hamer reminds us, staying in the fight is the key.

In the affecting words of the civil rights hero, as rendered by Oglesby: “Keep your eyes on the prize — hold on.”

David John Chávez is chair of the American Theatre Critics Association and served as a juror for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Twitter/Mastodon: @davidjchavez.

‘FANNIE: THE MUSIC AND LIFE OF FANNIE LOU HAMER’

By Cheryl L. West, presented by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley

Through: April 2

Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto

Running time: 70 minutes, no intermission

Tickets: $30-$82; theatreworks.org