Roslyn Ruff and Greta Oglesby (Craig Schwartz Photography)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Ebony Repertory Theatre at The Nate Holden Performing Arts Center
Through March 24
RECOMMENDED
For most of its running time, Zora Howard’s Stew (a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in drama) unfolds as a straightforward narrative about a Black matriarch, her two daughters and her granddaughter. The women have gathered to prepare food for a church function, their food prep is punctuated by plenty of high decibel, often humorous quarrelsomeness as resentments are aired and secrets revealed. Then, at play’s end, things unexpectedly skew into an enigmatic and unsettling dénouement that leaves us pondering what exactly happened just outside this middle-class kitchen.
Mama (Greta Oglesby), a gospel-singing woman of God who suffers no fools, is the family’s in-charge engine Lillian (Roslyn Ruff), her eldest daughter, is paying a rare visit to Mama’s house with her own young daughter, Lil Mama (iesha m. daniels). Still living at home, her other daughter, 17-year-old Nelly (Nedra Snipes), sneaks sexy phone calls with her boyfriend, or as she calls him, her “man.” Lillian’s young son Junior is at a friend’s house but expected home imminently. Meanwhile, Lil Mama has an audition for the school production of Richard III and she’s working up a serious case of stage fright.
The four women — each with her own challenges and crises — bicker and bond as they busily chop vegetables and snap green beans for the titular stew. Their first effort burns, ruining Mama’s best pot — a disaster that puts Mama into one of her increasingly frequent sinking spells. Her daughters confront her about her obviously declining health, but Mama just fires up another cigarette and denies anything serious is going on. Whether she is actually dying or not is never made clear — just one example of the ambiguity that underscores Howard’s text.
Scenic designer Michael Billings’s move-in ready set is a bit too meticulously maintained to convincingly reflect Mama’s failing state of health and, more symbolically, the fractures and fissures in this embattled family. Lindsay Jones’ sound design marvelously captures the ambience of this busy kitchen, right down to the sounds of the pilot lights catching on the stove. Properties designer Aaron Lyons convincingly tricks out the kitchen with all the necessary accoutrements, including a battered old broom that attests to just how long Mama has held sway in this otherwise pristine domestic microcosm.
Director Jade King Carroll expertly helms her superb cast, striking a delicate balance between the humorous and the devastating in Howard’s rich but frustratingly desultory drama. However, it is Oglesby’s Mama who dominates the action every time she is on stage. Cantankerous, inflexible and willful, Mama is a crotchety survivor whose abrasive interactions with her daughters masks a deep and abiding love. She’s a flame-on, full-bore force of nature, a woman of unshakeable faith who has experienced loss before. And she is about to have her faith cruelly tested yet again.
Ebony Repertory Theatre at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center, 4718 West Washington Blvd., LA. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sat., 2 pm, Sun., 3 pm & 7:30 pm; thru March 24. www.ebonyrep.org 90 minutes with no intermission.
