Photo by Blake Boyd
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Playwrights’ Arena at Greenway Court Theatre
Through April 6, 2014
Salani (Jennifer Hubilla), the central character in Velina Hasu Houston’s charmless chick lit musical, is a lovely orphaned teen, an upright individual who must contend with poverty, hard labor, and arrogant or lustful employers before triumphantly attaining freedom and self-realization.
The story is set in British Ceylon circa 1939; following the death of her mother, Salani seeks shelter with two other field-working cinnamon peelers, Praveena (Kerry K. Carnahan) and her odd unfriendly sister Tourmaline (Byron Arreola). After a scene that provides us with background info on Salina’s beloved mom, the scenario shifts to an upper-class Anglo household, where Salina is now working as a maid for a bitchy alcoholic woman, Empress (Leslie Stevens) and her snooty nebbish of a son, Wendell (Peter Mitchell), whom Empress haughtily demands the girl “entertain.”
Unlike Houston’s play Tea – a beautiful in-depth character study of women in crisis (whose stunning 1991 production at the Odyssey Theatre I recall with pleasure), this melodrama eschews any depth of character or narrative logic.
Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera, its patchwork plotline grows even more haphazard in Act 2; for example, when the Simon Legree of the story (Dom Magwili) viciously commands that Salani’s female friends track her down after she’s run away, the duo implausibly end up as maids in the same household that Salani has since fled. Some of this pubescent fantasy might be palatable were it served up as camp, but we’re asked instead to take it seriously. The show’s many songs, with lyrics by Houston and music by Nathan Wang, all sound pretty much the same. The vocals are mostly just passable, with the exception of Carnahan, whose splendid soulful voice and other adept skills make her a stand-out performer amidst the lesser talent. – Deborah Klugman
Playwrights Arena at Greenway Court Theatre, 544 N. Fairfax Ave., W. Hlywd ; Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7 p.m.; through April 6. (323) 655-7679. www.greenwayarts.org.
