A Reflective “Sunset Baby” Dawns Off Broadway

Nina—named for the play’s tutelary spirit, Simone—spends a great deal of “Sunset Baby” staring into a mirror, dressing for her part in these crimes, pulling her thigh-high electric-blue boots on and off, and making herself up to the point of unrecognizability. Ingram, who swung a lightsabre in the TV show “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” seems infinitely more tired here: her shoulders slump; her eyes, their lids painted peacock green, often drift nearly shut. Nina does have several stashes of treasure, however, that she hasn’t told Damon about. Most important is a trove of letters that her mother left behind, written but never sent to her lover in prison; now that Kenyatta is out, he’s desperate to have them. First, he begs his daughter, and she rejects him, with a surge of righteous fury. But, once Damon realizes that Kenyatta might be willing to pay for the letters, he pressures Nina into meeting with him again. Bitter and hardened as she is, her father’s still burning idealism starts to melt and change her, even though he himself never seems to bend. Hornsby plays Kenyatta as a man always standing rigidly at attention, a soldier who hears the bugle calling.