Jessica Perkins, Ritzi Lanier, Angela Fairley, Shamya Jamerica. (Photo courtesy of Loft Ensemble)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Loft Ensemble at Sawyer’s Playhouse
Through March 24
RECOMMENDED
Loosely based on true events, Shawanna Renee Rivon’s new play, Power to the Queendom, dramatizes a deadly standoff between a local branch of the Black Panther Party and the police.
The action is set in Houston in the early 1970s. The city is very much on edge after an assault on a Black man who was handing out leaflets outside the offices of the People’s Party, an offshoot of the Panthers. The location of the offices has been kept secret — an effort to foil the surveillance of the city’s overtly racist police chief.
The “queens” of the somewhat misleading title (no, this isn’t a drag show) are Ada (Jessica Perkins), Carolyn (Shamya Jamerica), teenaged DeeJay (Angela Fairley), and the pregnant Rebbie (Ravyne Demyra Payne, alternating in the role with Ritzi Lanier). All are ardent activists whose duties, thus far, have been largely administrative. When police officer Howard (Max Reed III, alternating with Kyle Wallen) is caught spying on the premises, the four women wind up with a high-profile hostage on their hands. Meanwhile, just outside, a simmering standoff between the cops and the Panthers, led by Rebbie’s husband, Bobby (Matt Lorenzo, alternating with Michael Houston), is reaching flashpoint.
Events go back and forth between the current crisis and Rebbie’s romance with Bobby, a courageous Black Panther organizer who is dedicated to serving the Black community, and who has inspired the initially timorous Rebbie to do the same. But, as her peers subsequently learn, Rebbie has a secret as explosive as the events unfolding outside.
In addition to Bobby and Rebbie’s relationship, flashbacks focus on Bobby’s impassioned activism. The mottos and messages of the era (“Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud” etc.) are echoed by the four female characters, whose political speechifying segues into revelatory reminiscences about past tragedies — then, strangely, into humorous exchanges, complete with laugh lines. The desultory chit-chat results in a cozy coffee klatch atmosphere that seems unlikely, considering there’s an unconscious cop just offstage and the police closing in.
The play’s strident rhetoric sometimes sounds as if it were derived from an actual 1970s Black Panthers rally — a wholly appropriate and timely tone that lends immediacy to the story. While it’s true that didacticism sometimes threatens to overwhelm the drama, in this case the message is the medium. Director Diane Reneé and her fiery cast capture the hopefulness and fury of the period in a high-energy production that is, sadly, not so much a period piece as it is a topical reflection of our current culture, in which police continue to kill Black people with impunity — a wrenching reminder of just how little has changed in the ensuing decades.
Sawyer’s Playhouse at Loft Ensemble, 11031 Camarillo St., North Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 7 pm; thru March 24. (818) 452-3153. www.loftensemble.org Running time: two hours with an intermission.
