Sax Molds Something Modern and Expressive

About this picture: Taken from Clay’s official MySpace.

Hip-hop is essentially unheard of in Broadway and off-Broadway shows. Usually when you happen upon tickets to the typical musical, the numbers included in it tend to be poppy and understandable to all members of its audience. In October of this year, however, Clay was released in New York to be an off-Broadway anomaly.

The brains behind this operation is Matt Sax: a 24 year-old graduate from Northwestern University who is the star of the entire play (that’s right folks—it’s a one-man show). But that doesn’t seem to hold back the deliverance of the plot one bit. Sax defines each of his characters well enough so that the audience knows who he’s playing and when he’s playing him (or, in some cases, her). The real difficulty lies in the unique genre of the show. Being that Clay is a hip-hop musical, the details of the play seem to fly rapidly in your face as Sax delivers his rhymes on his co-star microphone, which he sometimes uses to portray characters. At certain points during his freestyles, you could look into the audience and notice the confused faces of members who are not too familiar with the slang and speed of rap.

The story within Clay, as its genre, is contemporary. Clifford, a kid from Westchester, is faced with the divorce of his parents who both hail from different social classes. As Clifford grows up and after the death of his mother, he finds himself strangely attracted to the power of hip-hop. While this attraction is forming Clifford’s attraction to his new mother deepens as well, sexually and emotionally. Soon, Clifford is banned from his materially comfortable life and forced to find himself through the teachings of hip-hop from a man who knows life’s troubles. It is at this point that he becomes “Clay.” The play starts and ends with a performance by Clay but by its end, you will find yourself questioning whether or not Clifford’s character actually developed. He ultimately transforms from an unhappy and confused kid to a magical lyricist with a new name—who still carries a great deal of hate and resent for his father as a mode to cope with his mother’s death.

Through Clay’s flashbacks, the audience gets to encounter momentous events in Clifford’s life. Sax’s narrative role strengthens the play by smoothly guiding the audience through each event while adding an element of entertainment, especially when Sax decides to challenge the invisible barrier between stage and audience by asking for cheers and personally visiting audience members. If not by its story, Clay seems to be held together by the outgoing character of Sax himself and is a play that I would recommend to any fan of modern stage performances and/or hip-hop.