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THE OTHER SIDE OF NEWARK

THEATER REVIEW; WHEN GOOD INTENTIONS ARE NOT ENOUGH
Sunday, February 8, 2004
By NEIL GENZLINGER

''THE Other Side of Newark'' unfolds so delicately that it would be easy to miss what this quiet drama actually is: a searing critique of a certain brand of condescending white liberalism that can be as bad as the evils it seeks to cure.

The play, flawlessly acted and perfectly suited to the confines of Luna Stage here, spurns the feel-good moment in favor of the unsettling one, a credit to its author, Enid Rudd. At the start we meet Rose, an elderly white woman who has checked into a hospital and asked specifically for a black nurse named Dinah. Their relationship in this opening scene is chilly, and the rest of the play is a long journey into the past to explain why.

The journey is so long, in fact, encompassing a lifetime and an eventful century, that you almost forget how the play opened. From the hospital the story flashes back to the 1930's, when Rose was a prim young schoolteacher taking up duties at a largely black school in Newark. Dinah was the 11-year-old student who became her personal project, a child from an impoverished home who had potential but, in Rose's eyes, needed a savior.

As their story rolls along, there is every reason to think this will turn into another in the line of heartwarming tales in which, as the smarmy song said, ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony. Rose and Dinah forge a relationship and, with Rose's idealistic, left-leaning husband, form a perfect triangle of mid-20th-century oppressed souls: the Jew, the Communist and the black.

But Ms. Rudd nicely plants hints along the way that all is not quite right with this picture. Rose is the type of savior who speaks dismissively of Dinah's mother (''Maybe she shouldn't have had all those babies'') and has no interest in seeing the world through another race's eyes. She is rabid about getting Dinah to speak the king's English and lectures her so often about cleanliness that she might as well be telling her to try to scrub her skin white. The play is a beautiful study of what happens when good intentions collide with deep-seated, well-masked prejudices, and it helps explain why today, decades into the civil rights movement, the gulf between races can seem as wide as ever.

The play includes as fine a stage performance as you're likely to see from a teenager; Dana Jones, as the young Dinah, is a student at Montclair High School. Even more impressive is Antoinette Doherty's evocation of Rose; she is equally convincing as the 79-year-old version and as the newly minted teacher. Kirk Mouser turns in another quality performance as Rose's husband, and Chantal Jean-Pierre as the adult Dinah and Kenneth Boys as Rose's doctor fit in seamlessly. The play is a bit too long and has stretches that seem obligatory as all of the mid-20th-century's demons are dutifully invoked. But Jane Mandel's direction keeps things sharp where they need to be.

''The Other Side of Newark'' is at Luna Stage, 695 Bloomfield Avenue, Montclair, through Feb. 22. Information: (973)744-3309.