Face Off Theatre and the Kalamazoo Civic Theatre recently opened their first collaborative production, “The Colored Museum.” WMUK’s Gordon Bolar has this review.
George C. Wolfe’s play is comprised of eleven vignettes, or exhibits, depicting the behavior, habits, personalities, and choices of a dozen or so African-American characters, portrayed by African-American actors.
In The Colored Museum, vividly staged with music and supporting slides in the Civic’s Suzanne Parish Theatre, most of the approximately ten-minute plays, could stand alone. The connection is the common struggle of characters to cling to or separate themselves from their cultural identity.
Alyssa Laney is effective as the smiling stewardess who welcomes the audience to what appears to be a slave flight from Africa. Her cheerful nature turns edgy, however, as she provides instructions on securing the shackles that will bind passengers during the flight. Her firm command of “no drums” on the plane, serves as a warning that traditional cultural accoutrements will be challenged and up for grabs in the new world destination of America.
In a televised cooking show, Aunt Ethel, played by Rev. Karen Moorman, shares what appears to be a recipe with her viewers. Her appropriately folksy manner lulls the audience into a false sense of security until the end product of her labors over the cauldron she stirs is revealed. We realize that what we are seeing is really a cannibalization of tradition for public display.
The alienation that occurs when a population assimilates into a new culture is delineated with quiet, visceral menace by Julian S. Newman, as a young black soldier in Vietnam. He discovers that upon dying in battle he is now free from the pain that plagues his people. In his afterlife, he seeks to relieve his brothers, living black soldiers of suffering he sees in their future.
Kayden Moore, as Miss Roj, a performer in a gay nightclub, provides a portrait of a bitter soul struggling with sexual identity, or at least with others’ perception of it. The struggle also extends to the demons at the bottom of a glass of rum and coke. This long scene could benefit from judicious cutting and by fading down the performer’s competing soundtrack.
A battle of physical identities is revealed in “The Hairpiece,” as Alyssa Laney’s character chooses which image she presents to her boyfriend. Two talking wigs, portrayed by Milan Levy and Gweneé Hart, vie for her attention in this hilarious dissection of beauty and its values.
In “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play,” Jared Pittman, as the fiery son from A Raisin in the Sun, brings a tired complaint into his Mama’s house about being oppressed by “the man.”
Despite this insanely funny, over-the-top send-up of Loraine Hansberry’s masterwork, playwright Wolfe’s goal here is to refocus our attention from what he sees as the stereotypical concerns of racial oppression and fix our eyes firmly on the prize of maintaining African- American cultural identity and tradition in the home. After all, Mama’s chief concern is that her son wipes his feet at the door and shows respect for God in her house.
At the heart of Wolfe’s play is “Symbiosis,” a scene featuring Julian Newman, in a revelatory performance of a middle-aged, suit and tie, African-American Man, who stands by a dumpster. He methodically discards relics from his past into the dumpster, including Converse sneakers, a dashiki, a bottle of Afro-Sheen, and a number of old records including those of Michael Jackson.
As the man rids himself of these icons of popular culture, a teenage Boy, representing the Man’s younger self, looks on with a cautionary admonition. The Boy, played convincingly by Delanti Hall, pleads with the Man not to destroy his past. The Man counters by saying he must “adjust or become extinct,” since he now allows himself to be a Black man only on the weekends.
After the Temptations’ “My Girl” is sung by the Boy and the audience, the man begins to reconsider his position and impending divorce from all he once treasured. The Boy’s case is made: the present and past need one another and can coexist in the same place.
In “Lala’s Opening,” Dayanna Price presents a feather boa-clad diva, obsessed with her image. The price for success in her self-centered career has included the sacrifice of a traditional marriage. In Lala’s case, it also included the literal flesh and blood sacrifice of her husband. This scene makes its painful point several times and then continues far too long before us.
In “The Party” Gweneé Hart is a colorful party girl who is willingly transformed and transported by the madness in her and the music around her. As the formerly banned drums from the first scene are heard again, and the ensemble emerges to support her in a pop infused, tribal celebration, the implied message is underscored: The cultural impulses, and traditions carried within African Americans carry the hope to rebuild African-American communities.
In his address to the audience on Saturday night, director Anthony J. Hamilton noted that Wolfe’s playThe Colored Museumwas first performed in 1986. Hamilton added “we’ll see if it still works today.” Given the audience reaction, Hamilton’s sparkling production, and given America’s current culture wars, the simple rejoinder is a resounding “It does work!”