The Colored Museum
Reviewed by Martίn Hernández
Loft Ensemble
Through July 25
RECOMMENDED
George C. Wolfe’s 1986 satiric take on Black American culture still packs a wallop, a testament to the durability of this classic and that for Black people things have gotten worse since the play’s premiere.
Wolfe’s panoply offers eleven “exhibits,” poking acerbic fun at cultural tropes, internalized oppression, respectability politics, and just what wig to wear. Director Jazmine Nichelle delivers an outstanding production with the comic flair and dramatic anguish that Wolfe’s seminal work deserves. And each performer, either in a solo or ensemble piece, comic or dramatic, shines in their roles. While some bits may seem dated, their essence is still biting, all aided by Madylin Sweeten Durrie’s emblematic set, Amanda Chambers’s graphics and Bree Pavey’s sound and projection work – especially the center stage screen announcing the title of each “exhibit.”
In “Git On Board,” flight attendant Miss Pat (Ravyne Demyra Payne) welcomes us aboard the Celebrity Slaveship and exhorts us that “shackles must be worn at all times” on our high-altitude trip from the Gold Coast to Savannah. Instructing us on proper slave behavior, the prim Miss Pat is soon unnerved when drums start beating — “in coach,” of course – and you know what that means. As chilling slides of racial atrocities flash on the screen, the turbulence soon subsides, and “passengers” deboard to their new lives. Now they are in America where, as the airline’s name suggests, the country may allow select Black folk to get rich as celebrities but not so rich that they cancel its racist flight.
Unable to resolve the contradictions and pain in their real lives, a Black couple (Bahasi Chapman and Antwan Alexander II in dynamic turns) take on glamourous ones inside the pages of Ebony magazine in “The Photo Session.” Striking sexy poses in chic clothes, they exist where everything is beautiful and nothing is profound, meaningful or contradictory, serving as tools for a corporate culture machine that sucks dollars from their people and leaves the pair fabulous but hollow.
“The Last Mama On The Couch Play,” is an outrageous and thought-provoking parody of A Raisin in the Sun, for colored girls . . . and other Black theater warhorses. Our Narrator (Sean James) introduces us to the put-upon, overweight, and widowed Mama (Payne) who, of course, cannot get off the couch. There is also her son (an inspired Matt Lorenzo), who cannot get ahead since The Man always has his foot on his neck, his wife (Chapman) is all esoteric poetry and flowing movements, and his sister (Zenzarra James), a seething cauldron of goofy emotions. The family chews the scenery like starving hyenas, all to win the little gold statue the Narrator holds on his dais.
Jefferson Reid is solid as the “Soldier With A Secret,” who relates how the wars Black people fight for America overseas are nothing compared to the inner war they fight when they get home. In the witty and wise “Symbiosis,” The Man (James) clashes with his younger self, The Kid (Lorenzo), as he tries to exorcise his Blacker and more radical past to make it in White corporate America – please don’t toss out the Temptations Greatest Hits! “Lala’s Opening” has Jessica Perkins as a poor Mississippi girl reinventing herself as a French-accented chanteuse, coming off silly at first but earning our sympathy as we realize her code-switching may be extreme but is not much different from other marginalized folks.
At the end, Wolfe proffers hope and inspiration with “The Party.” Topsy Washington (an effervescent Katisha Sargeant) encounters an uptown shindig “between 125th Street and infinity,” where Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Bert Williams, Aunt Jemima, Nat Turner, and other Black icons tear it up, “dancing to the rhythm of their own definition, celebrating in their cultural madness.” That madness now infuses Topsy’s head, her strut, and her soul and there ain’t no stopping her now. The ancestors’ history is feeding her and her fellows. Hopefully that history will continue to flourish.
Loft Ensemble, 11031 Camarillo Street, North Hollywood; Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through July 25. loftensemble.org
