‘Voice of Good Hope’ an electrifying portrait of Texas lawmaker Barbara Jordan

Playwright Kristine Thatcher begins “Voice of Good Hope,” her vivid, resonant portrait of Texas lawmaker Barbara Jordan, without contextual preamble. At lights up, a regal woman in a power-red suit delivers a monologue proclaiming her faith in the U.S. Constitution.

Audiences will presumably intuit that the speaker is Jordan, whose resume gleams with the debris of shattered glass ceilings: In 1966, she became the first black woman elected to the Texas senate. In 1972, she became the first black woman from the Deep South elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The opening monologue in “Voice of Good Hope” comes from Jordan’s July 25, 1974, speech on the impeachment proceedings of Richard M. Nixon. Thatcher doesn’t waste exposition explaining when or where we are; she allows Jordan’s own words to do that. Those words, delivered with ardent eloquence by Andrea Conway-Diaz, don’t sound almost 50 years old. In director Terry McCabe’s staging for City Lit Theater, they sound like now.

That opening scene ends with a question and a plea. The former: Has the president’s behavior violated the Constitution? The latter: Reason and not passion “must guide” the deliberations that determine the answer. The galvanizing speech made headlines across the country. Jordan died at 59 in 1996, her life shortened by multiple sclerosis and pneumonia. In McCabe’s bold, compelling and witty production, her story becomes a mirror, a slice of history with stunning contemporary relevance.

Thatcher’s non-linear structure jumps between 1948 and 1994, from Jordan’s Houston, Texas, childhood to a hospital room where she’s in clear decline of body but definitely not mind. Jordan is a precociously intelligent child (called “Heart” played by Mi’Kayla Boyd opening night, who stepped in for the ailing McKennzie Boyd) matching wits with her maternal grandfather, John Ed Patten (Jamie Black). As an adult, she’s indomitable, whether sparring with Texas powerbroker Robert Strauss (Paul Chakrin) or her “housemate” Nancy Earl (Susie Griffith) or explaining why doesn’t call herself “African-American.” (She isn’t a hyphenate American, Jordan pointedly asserts. She’s an American who happens to have African roots.)

Conway-Diaz captures the sense and sensibility of a bonafide powerhouse. The issues at hand — the state of a nation consumed by a Constitutional crisis, the state of a body consumed by incurable disease — invite over-the-top emotion. Death and downfall don’t exactly scream subtlety. Conway-Diaz never falls into the over-emotive traps such subjects lay. Sure, she flares with fiery contempt when confronted by that wheelchair (and when Nancy steals her cigarettes). But she wields her ferocious power without flaunting it, whether she’s fighting with Earl or explaining why she’ll grant a political favor to former Texas Governor John Connally, the Democrat-turned-Republican who urged Nixon to burn the Watergate Tapes and bomb Hanoi.

Thatcher includes a pair of two-person scenes that capture the essence of Jordan’s complex, sometimes seemingly contradictory positions. The first is with Chakrin’s Strauss, the Texas politician who served as DNC chair, U.S. Trade Rep and U.S. ambassador to Russia, among other lofty positions. Their conversation is spiky, their differences intractable, their respect for each other obvious. Chakrin is a worthy scene partner who makes the slippery, entangled alliances required of high-level politicos understandable both intellectually and emotionally.

The second is with Noelle Klyce as Julie Dunn, a former Jordan student struggling to win an embattled political race. The dynamic between the two women is part Socratic debate, part fire-and-brimstone argument. It’s intensely memorable, both for the sheer acting prowess on display and the philosophical conundrum it raises.

Steve Graue

Griffith’s Earl provides an understated but evocative glimpse of Jordan’s personal life. It’s clear the women love each other, but as in real life, the nature of that love is never publicly explored. They bicker with the shorthand of longtime spouses. They are clearly each other’s forever port in a storm. They lived together for decades. If they were romantic partners, they never let on publicly.

Katy Vest’s costume design is outstanding. Jordan’s impeccably cut crimson suit makes a bold statement before the first word is uttered. Earl’s sparrow-colored, utilitarian garb emphasizes her role as a caregiver and (as Earl tells the doctor) “the responsible adult in the room.” Heart’s Peter Pan-collared dress could be out of a 1940s catalogue. Black’s tidy sweater vest emphasizes his warmth and dignity, even in the humble chore of folding rags. Ray Toler’s set is like a pop-up book writ large, a series of panels depicting the Texas state seal, campaign buttons and the Declaration of Independence that opens up to reveal Jordan’s office.

It doesn’t matter where you are on the political spectrum. It’s impossible not to hear Jordan’s words about Nixon (“I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”) without wondering what she’d have to say today.

Catey Sullivam is a local freelance writer.