Too Heavy For Your Pocket Weighs The Cost Of Making A Difference

Eminently engaging and candid, Too Heavy for Your Pocket, now at TimeLine and directed by Ron OJ Parson, is an intimate look at two working-class African American couples living on the fringes of the civil rights movement in Tennessee. Full of joy and humor, singing and crying, this multifaceted story opens in 1961 as Sally Mae (Jennifer Latimore) is about to graduate from college. Her husband, Tony (Cage Sebastian Pierre), and best friends Bowzie (Jalen Gilbert) and Evelyn (Ayanna Bria Bakari) have come to share the celebration.

Too Heavy dips its toe into issues of racism and civil rights, but it swims more deeply in everyday issues of marital fidelity, sacrifice, responsibility to friends and family, and fulfillment of one’s own dreams. It’s delightful to see a play that is at once simple and yet produces such profound change for all its characters. With an engaging, interactive lobby display about the Freedom Riders and civil rights movement, TimeLine reminds us that there is always a battle to achieve freedom—and how important that still is 60 years later.   v

Through 6/29: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Tue 6/25, 7:30 PM, TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington, 773-281-8463, timelinetheatre.com, $40-$54.