Man’s Favor Devil’s Plan

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
The Robey Theatre Company at LATC
Through November 20

Man’s Favor Devil’s Plan, by Kwik Jones, takes place on the loading dock at the rear of a hotel in Los Angeles in 1938. The story concerns the relationship between the hotel’s White owner, an unmitigated racist and an otherwise cruel and unscrupulous individual, and the hotel staff, who are African American and are forced to put up with their employer’s abuse because they cannot afford to lose their jobs, or because they are being blackmailed in some way. The play, which aims to reflect the vicious racism that permeates American culture, is set at a period in our history when people of color were even more vulnerable and less legally protected than they are now.

The story opens on Laddie (Matt Jennings), a 20-something bellhop with good looks, good manners and aspirations to be a dancer.  As he practices his steps, he keeps an eye out for a delivery important to his boss, Avery (Darrell Phillip), a smug, unpleasant man who revels in the power he has over his workers, and who carries a pistol for use should anyone dare to challenge him. Unbeknownst to Laddie, Avery has nefarious designs on Laddie’s younger sister, DD (Ashlee Olivia Jones), who works in the hotel as a maid.

Laddie and DD’s co-workers include Butchie (Nic Few), a dishwasher so physically fit that he once went a few rounds with a champion boxer; Butchie’s heartthrob Mabel-Lynn (Christina Childress), who is facing eviction and so needs cash right away; and Pearl (Crystal Nix), a senior employee who has promised Mabel that she will speak to Avery about an advance.

The narrative depicts the predicament of these workers who are kind and supportive of each other but live haunted lives in Avery’s fearmongering shadow. In scene after scene, the character of Avery comes across as a sadistic, remorseless racist, whose sole aim in life appears to be devising ways and means to humiliate Black people. The women, he violates; the men, he robs and blackmails (He blackmails the women too.)

One reason given for Avery’s egregious behavior is his suppressed rage at his (unseen) father, who has always belittled him and who even now threatens to take back control of the hotel that Avery’s been managing all these years. Avery gnashes his teeth over this on more than one occasion. Having been made to feel small, he’s evidently compensating by treating other people like dirt.

I wish I could say this explanation suffices for the Simon Legree-like quality of this figure, but it does not. While the societal evils he represents are real, and such malignant people do exist, the character as devised — he’s positively gleeful as he tightens the screws, whatever the circumstance — is too much a caricature.

Directed by C. Julian White, several performances, including Phillip’s villain, are stuck in idle mode, unable to stir beyond the labored limitations of this melodrama. As the lovestruck Butchie, finally driven to stand up to the perfidious Avery, Few delivers the most physically expressive performance among the ensemble — this actor works hard to give his character inner life. In the role of Butchie’s on-again, off-again lady love, Childress exudes a believable warmth, and the playful interchanges between these two are the production’s truest moments. Nix also creates empathy as an older woman whose understanding of the rules of the game can’t save her from Avery’s gratuitous cruelty.

Scenic designer Nathan Stuffel’s two-tiered set features a raised platform whose shallowness constricts the movements of the actors not able to leap on or off it, as Few and Jennings do. Cydne Wayne Davis’ bluesy music is period appropriate. I was puzzled as to why costumer Naila Aladdin Sanders puts Avery in a buttoned-up suit and tie on what is supposed to be such a broiling hot day that he invites his employee Laddie to take off his own jacket. Also, having the actor carry the gun in his back pants pocket proves problematic when he has to whip it out — better he carry it in an inside pocket in the jacket instead.

The Robey Theatre Company, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theatre 4, 514 S. Spring St., downtown Los Angeles; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm; thru Nov. 20. https://ci.ovationtix.com/28125/production/1140735. Running time: approximately one hour and 45 minutes with an intermission.