Victory Gardens Theater, Chicago
September 14 – October 28, 1990
As T Bone, with Eddie Jemison (left) as Weasel and Jamie Baron as Verna Mae Beaufort
Critical Response
“T Bone is the straight man (played with admirable seriousness by Johnny Lee Davenport), more worldly and also more bitter, mostly because he’s black.”
—Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times (September 21, 1990)
“There probably will never be a better production of ‘T Bone N Weasel” than the one currently at the Victory Gardens Theater. . . . Johnny Lee Davenport as T Bone and Eddie Jemison as Weasel—also turn in fine performances. Davenport manages to portray T Bone as menacing, but also sensitive and vulnerable.”
—Tom Valeo, Daily Herald (September 24, 1990)
“[Dennis Zacek’s] staging of the comedy is slick, buoyant, and sharply played by its three-man cast: Johnny Lee Davenport and Eddie Jemison as the title characters, and quick-change artist Jamie Baron as the various lowlifes the heroes meet on their journey. . . . Johnny Lee Davenport, flashing a mouthful of gleaming gold teeth, effectively walks the fine line between T Bone’s competing attitudes of cynicism and hopefulness. . . . Under Zacek’s direction, these three very able actors almost succeed in hiding the play’s shallowness through an abundance of physically inventive stage tricks, including funny entrances and exits through trapdoors and drainpipes and deft pantomime car driving, bus riding, and so on.”
—Albert Williams, Chicago Reader (September 27, 1990)