Fetch Clay, Make Man

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Kirk Douglas Theatre
Through July 2

RECOMMENDED

It’s hard to imagine two public figures more dissimilar in their representation of the African American community than Stepin Fetchit, an actor whose fame rested on his clichéd portrait of a lazy shuffling Negro, and Muhammad Ali, a champion boxer and cultural icon who defied convention and whose embrace of Islam and criticism of the White Establishment cost him dear.

Yet historically, the two men were friends — or at the very least acquainted. A photo in which they appear together served as inspiration for playwright Will Power’s Fetch Clay, Make Man, which reflects not only on the struggle of Black men and women to preserve their dignity in our racist society but on the thorny role of religion and ideology in defining who we are as individuals.

Power espied the photo in a large coffee table book about Ali that he discovered in Marcus Book Store in San Francisco one day when he was browsing. It was taken in 1965 — which happened to be the year of the march on Selma, and two years following Martin Luther King’s clarion “I Have a Dream” speech. It was also the year that Malcolm X, at odds with the Nation of Islam, was assassinated. The photo was taken in May, on the eve of Ali’s return match with Sonny Liston, which he was widely expected to lose. It featured, according to Powers, Ali “and his entourage, which included his trainer, his bodyguards and his sidekick, looking defiantly into the camera.” What caught the playwright’s eye was the unlikely presence of Fetchit among them.

How and why was Fetchit there? So intrigued was Power by this anomaly that he wrote a whole play about it.

In his imagined scenario, Ali (Ray Fisher) has invited Fetchit (Edwin Lee Gibson in a sterling performance) to his dressing room to glean information about the technique of former boxing champ, Jack Johnson, whom Fetchit had known back in the day. How did Johnson defeat his rivals, Ali wants to know — or more specifically, did he have a “secret” punch that Fetchit knew about and that he could now relay to Ali himself to aid him in this confrontation with Liston?

Fetchit is caught off-guard and denies knowing anything of a secret punch — but his interview with Ali continues anyway. The celebrity boxer has taken a shine to the now frail and ailing former actor, much to the disgust of his valet and quasi-bodyguard Rashid (Wilkie Ferguson III), a Muslim and fanatical ideologue who hasn’t time for the likes of an “Uncle Tom” sellout like Fetchit.

Amidst the tensions and contrasts among these three men, the play speculates on the relationship between Ali and his first wife Sonji (Alexis Floyd), who passionately adores her husband and has converted to Islam at his request, but who is finding its harsh strictures on women demeaning. Her ire is especially fueled by the efforts of the self-righteous Rashid to define “her place.” A fifth character, the movie producer William Fox (Bruce Nozick) appears in flashbacks; in these we see a younger, healthier Fetchit at the height of his career — a moneymaker for both himself and the studios, and a smart tough negotiator on his own behalf. Fox (instead of being a cliché) gets to tell his story too —that of a self-made millionaire who clawed his way up from ghetto rubble. The role is a solid cameo, and Nozick, a veteran at playing tough-talking dudes, runs with it.

Fetch Clay, Make Man doesn’t deliver a narrative with a beginning, a clear middle and an end; it’s more a series of scenes with a landscape of views on religion, race and the role of women at a pivotal moment in our history. But it works supremely well as such because the characters through which its perspectives are filtered are so richly and skillfully drawn.

Directed by Debbie Allen, the story comes most spectacularly to life in Gibson’s intricately fashioned portrayal of a vulnerable elderly man who, despite physicals failings, remains nobody’s fool. Fisher, who performed the role of Ali in the play’s Off-Broadway premiere at New York Theatre Workshop in 2013, projects the bluster of the former champ but without the finely tempered nuances of a memorable portrayal. That missing nuance is likewise underdeveloped in the scenes between Ali and Sonji, a shortcoming I perceived as one of direction. Ferguson is despicably spot-on as a true believer who fails to respect the humanity of anyone who doesn’t support his cause.

Sybil Wickersheimer’s interior is spare and functional, with effective lighting by Tom Ontiveros and enhancing sound and composition by Lindsay Jones. Pablo N. Molina’s projection design provides historical scope. Sara Ryung Clement’s costumes for Sonji struck me as transitioning too swiftly and radically from Muslim garb to party dress without being especially flattering to the performer.

Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City; Tues.-Sat., 8 pm, Sat., 2 pm, Sun., 1 pm & 6:30 pm; thru July 2. https://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/kirk-douglas-theatre/2022-23/fetch-clay-make-man/. Running time: two hours and 15 minutes with an intermission.

Piping Hot

Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris
The Yard Theatre
Closed 

RECOMMENDED

Comedian Madeline Hamilton’s 60-minute lecture-confessional on how to play the bagpipes, told in conjunction with her stories from her desperate, desolate love life, is an idiosyncratic, racy homage to Scotland’s national musical instrument.

Hamilton is tailoring the piece for its premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and this LA preview was a warm-up for that, and — for the record — not part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival, which is being performed concurrently.

Short story shorter, Hamilton presents herself as doggedly hetero and persistently disappointed by men (in the US and Scotland) who either pretended to be caring and then walked out or didn’t even pretend. (One Scottish lover literally couldn’t face her during sex, and used her as a kind of emotional punching bag to take out his anger at being dumped by his ex, a similarly shaped blonde, similarly named Madeleine. (They met on the Internet, so he knew her name and her look.)

A svelte, athletic woman on a stage adorned with just a music stand, Hamilton arrives dressed in a black halter top, a tartan skirt and goth boots. She’s wielding a set of bagpipes. Hamilton is as American as Texas, where she’s from, and where, she says, she grew up in a conservative, religious community that preached the evils of masturbation, a restraint that postponed at least one level of satisfaction. In terms of self-esteem, her beauty was described in her high school yearbook as “understated.” This was probably intended as a compliment, she opines, but didn’t come out that way. While attending USC, she hooked up, in all meanings of that phrase, including the latch, with a fellow who introduced her to USC’s comedy club and TV station. Yes, that conjugal relationship went belly up, perhaps because of a culturally imbibed need for loyalty and monogamy.

During a semester abroad in Edinburgh, she decided, as a joke, to learn how to play the bagpipes, a joke that turned into her obsession.

After years of rejection by men, she now considers the bagpipes her lover — five penises connected to a scrotum. There’s a chanter, three drones and, yes, a blow pipe. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to know where this is going.

Unable to let go of this obsession, she plays her bagpipes on the beach, on the streets, gets screamed at by passers-by for being “ugly” and “out of tune.” She gets insulted online for being an American out of her depth with a foreign cultural relic. Hamilton makes no claim to being a bagpipe prodigy. It’s a very difficult instrument, and she’s learning. Still, her onstage demonstration is perfectly competent, and very loud.

Her delightful performance, amiable, funny and self-deprecating, invites the question of why men keep abandoning her. Is this a quality of hetero men in the 2020s? If it’s something about her, I couldn’t see it. Is there something she’s not telling us? Not showing us?

She describes herself growing up as obsessively competitive, racing to her goals like a Quarter-Horse. Among those goals is partnership with a male, a goal as yet, unfulfilled.

The beauty of this performance, under Michelle Askew’s spirited direction, is the epiphany that learning to play the bagpipes takes patience and skill. But it starts with patience. Calm. And it’s a long, fulfilling process. A metaphor, anybody?

The Lark Theatre, 4319 Melrose Ave., East Hollywood. Closed.

Shagadelic: The Origins of Slang Words for Doing It

Reviewed by G. Bruce Smith
The Broadwater Studio
HDFF ’23 – Through June 24

RECOMMENDED

Dear Professor Richard Fondler (aka Michael Blaha),

Well, that was . . . interesting.

I’m referring, of course, to your one-hour lecture/performance with the catchy title Shagadelic: The Origins of Slang Words for Doing It.  When I say “interesting” – which of course in the theater world is an often cringe-worthy word, depending on the tone by which it is delivered — I actually, really, truly mean Shagadelec wasinteresting. I learned so much about the etymology (the study of the true meaning of words) of the many, many, many slang euphemisms for sexual acts. And I like that you delivered your presentation with clever puns, witty asides, and occasional bad jokes.

Through your deep dive lecture, I learned that this unique slang family has roots in many countries and languages, sometimes dating back many centuries. Germany seems to rank high in countries of origin (given the hard “f”s in the language, this comes as no surprise). But you also pointed out the French bon mots —what other culture, but the Gallic, could come up with “la petite mort” (“little death”) for orgasm?

I wish I could go into detail on all your clever asides, your wry jokes, but because this is a public letter, I am restrained by vague notions of “decency,” whatever that means. However, I will share with you two of my favorite moments in your lecture.

For example, you say, to “nail” actually came from sailors’ payments to Tahitian sex workers with, for those in the South Pacific the much-prized Western piece of hardware. But, as you noted, that practice eventually stopped because the ships were falling apart. (Ba-da-boom.)

And the poetic, so-very-British phrase “amorous congress,” used primarily by the Georgian era upper crust when in public, reminded you of what could have been a love letter between Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Ba-da-boom again.)

I must say, Dr. Fondler, that you looked professorial indeed with your bow tie and jacket, which lent you an air of gravitas on a subject that lends itself to anything but. And you appropriately reminded us of the origin of “Shagadelic” – as in, Austin Powers’ “Shagadelic, Baby!” (Whether it was a party, a fun situation, or meeting beautiful women, the Mike Myers character loved to say this phrase.)

But Dr. Fondler, I’m sorry to say that after about the first half hour, I found myself fidgeting. While interesting (yes, genuinely interesting), your lecture began to feel like a conceit that wore out its welcome to some extent. And it didn’t help that you planted yourself firmly behind the podium for the full hour. I understand that professors do tend to clutch podiums, but there are those who move around on stage — animated, excited about their subjects. Many add audio-visual elements to their presentations. Many ask questions of their students/audience members that result in improvised – and sometimes fun, even hilarious – discussions. Something to consider, perhaps, in the future?

However, I concede that I might very well be in the minority. The Broadwater Studio audience – small but packed – laughed loudly and appreciatively throughout your lecture/performance. I could have sworn I heard some of them exclaim, at the end of your lecture/monologue, “Shagadelic, Baby!”

The Broadwater Studio, 1078 Lillian Way, Los Angeles. One performance remaining, 9 p.m. Saturday, June 24. (323) 455-4585 or https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/9829. Running time, one hour with no intermission.