Charlayne Woodward and Olivia Washington (Photo by Jeff Lorch)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Geffen Playhouse
Through July 12
RECOMMENDED
Denise Burse and Charlayne Woodard (Photo by Jeff Lorch)
Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous commences on a note of such arch theatricality that it’s easy to get turned off right away.
But once you begin cozying up to playwright Pearl Cleage’s vivid but flawed valentine to the theater, you realize that arch theatricality is very much the point.
Longtime theater diva Anna Campbell (Charlayne Woodard), who has returned to the United States after three decades in Holland, finds herself in unfortunate circumstances.
Anna made a career out of playing the classics in Europe, but she’s so flagrantly temperamental that she has burned her bridges across the pond. When Betty (Denise Burse), her best friend and manager, was hospitalized for several weeks, Anna took disastrous charge of her own finances and bookings, losing all her savings in a Ponzi scheme. She also failed to properly read a contract that summoned her back to the States for a theater festival bannered under the name Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous.
Anna is hoping to resuscitate her stalled career with her cause célèbre piece, Naked Wilson, a program consisting of all-male August Wilson monologues that she’d enacted, entirely in the nude, nearly 40 years earlier. It was a scandalous performance that stopped the show and went down in theatrical history.
However, she’s under a sad misapprehension. The festival’s producer, her former student and longtime admirer, Kate Hughes (Deborah Joy Winans), doesn’t want Anna to perform, but instead show up to accept a lifetime achievement award. When Anna learns she’s been replaced in her signature piece by pole dancer and porn performer, Precious “Pete” Watson (Olivia Washington), the stage is set for a clash of mindsets — Anna’s snooty, intellectualized approach to the theater pitted against the untutored Pete’s ignorance of all things theatrical. (Pete never even heard of August Wilson, but remembers seeing Fences on TV. She wasn’t that impressed.)
On first meeting, Anna tries to cow Pete with her superior airs, but her brutal condescension fails and she’s in for a rude surprise. Pete is a seen-it-all street fighter who has heretofore made her living by “shaking my ass at strangers.” She’s now looking for a different direction in her life and intends to get it. She counters Anna’s nastiness with “You’re too old to appear in this piece,” an observation that floors her antagonist and levels the playing field.
Under its lightheartedness, Angry is surprisingly philosophical. Cleage has a lot to say about Black identity, old school feminism, and the struggle of women, especially those of a certain age, in a male-dominated industry. Yet the piece is lumbered by faulty exposition and an antic plot that overstates the case.
Still, Cleage knows her way around an aphorism, and the laughs keep coming. When Kate enthuses to Betty that Anna is “ageless,” Betty sardonically responds with “Ageless is just old with her Sunday dress on.”
Under the astute guidance of director Latanya Richardson Jackson, the actors lean into their larger-than-life roles, chewing the scenery off Beowulf Boritt’s hotel room set with gusto.
Among the production elements, Hana S. Kim warrants special credit for the projection design that helps us make sense of Cleage’s comical barrage.
The actors are all excellent, but the evening really takes fire with the arrival of Washington, whose unapologetically brassy Pete clashes with Woodard’s genteel and devastatingly dismissive Anna. The scorched earth battle between Anna’s old guard theatrical methodology, all subtexts and painstaking preparation, and Pete’s raw, naively instinctual approach, is a crackling exchange between two well-matched warriors. Shortcomings aside, Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous illustrates how women, even those of such disparate backgrounds and beliefs, can form a warm bond through shared adversity. Above all, it’s pure fun.
Gil Cates Theater at Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. Wed.-Thurs., 7:30 pm, Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sat., 3 pm, Sun., 2 pm and 7 pm; thru July 12. https://secure.geffenplayhouse.org/overview/angry-raucous-and-shamelessly-gorgeous 1 hour, 40 minutes with no intermission
