"FATHERS AND SONS contains many pungent exchanges, and a meaningful subject: the estrangement of fathers and sons through several generations of African-American men and how it might be healed.
The omnipresent phantom Benard Goodwater is the bad daddy incarnate--a trumpet-toting, be-bopping ne'er-do-well, who serves as a jive Greek chorus.
He was clearly a lousy father to his haunted son Leon. And Leon returned the disfavor to his own offspring Marcus, by becoming a coke-sniffing, child-neglecting womanizer himself.
In FATHERS AND SONS, the two living relations, and the...