Fringe, Reviewed: What Good Has Come Out of Camden?

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What Good Has Come Out of Camden?, by Rocky Wilson 

Attended: Sept. 19, 7:30 p.m. Idea Performing Arts Center, Camden, N.J.; show closed.

A brick through his Camden window told Rocky Wilson he wasn’t living in Haddonfield any longer. But Camden became more than bricks and broken bottles—beneath the surface Wilson discovered an invincible city’s soul. Using sign language, poetry, music, and dance he explores the many wild stories Camden has to tell.

WE THINK: 

“I never dreamed I could become so rich in the poorest city in America,” said Rocky Wilson in What Good Has Come Out of Camden?, his first Philadelphia Fringe Festival performance in three years and the first-ever Fringe show in New Jersey. Wilson and his cast (Joanne Dozer, Mary Cavanaugh-Benson and pianist/singer Bill Bloom) performed a soulful flow of stories, poems and dance that gave the audience a glimpse into the rough-and-tumble experience of a white guy from Haddonfield moving to Camden in the 1970s for the cheap rent -- and never leaving.

“I left Camden for a bit, but I have to say, I don’t think Camden ever left me,” said Cavanaugh-Benson in her monologue. 

Encouraged to begin writing about his racial prejudices while taking a memoir class at First Person Arts in Philadelphia a year ago, Wilson, 71, began to piece together his show. A superb raconteur, he weaved his tale through nine short acts, which included four original poems and one song, “Stoop, Tomato Stoop.” Wilson’s regaled his listeners with true stories of surviving a stabbing by a Camden roommate, repeated robberies by his neighbors, and later sharing homemade birthday cakes and beers with the same people who had initially taken advantage of him. 

The standout fourth act, Little League, began with a tune from South Pacific, “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught,” which fit the show’s theme of confronting racial prejudices seamlessly. Wilson, sitting in front of a stark black backdrop, told the story of his Little League team in Haddonfield in the 1950’s. A black and white team photo of a stoic young Wilson next to his black teammate was shown on a large screen behind him. 

“The way I acted in the past, I wish I could go back and change that,” Wilson said.

By the sixth act, Wilson provided uncomfortable laughter as his pants came off (and then quickly went back on), dishing out one of the many light moments throughout the show. His performance surely just scratched the surface of the stories Wilson has accrued over the years while living on Penn Street. The takeaway from What Good Has Come Out of Camden? was as sharp as the knife that missed Wilson’s lungs by centimeters: No matter how or why people get their racial prejudices, it’s still possible to learn to love one another.