“Polished and silky-smooth… uniformly at ease”

-Bruce Weber, The New York Times

Read the Full Review

“A Pop-Tune Counterpoint To a Family’s Wisecracks”

The Clarks, who own a successful funeral home, are the richest black family in the fictional town of Kent, S.C. But they're just ordinary folks, at least if you believe what you see on television.

As the focus of ''Blue,'' an amiable featherweight of a play by Charles Randolph-Wright that opened yesterday at the Gramercy Theater, they are a clan built to prime-time specifications: Peggy, an overbearing mom; Samuel Jr., a forbearing Dad; Tillie, a crusty grandma; and two sons, Samuel III, a renegade 17-year-old, and Reuben, an observant 12-year-old.

Their individual quirks and conflicts are more genially tickling than poignant, drawing on the comforts of pop culture. A dinner-table scene in the opening act, which is set in the 1970's, is exemplary. In it, Peggy (Phylicia Rashad) pompously introduces each course of an Italian meal in Italian; her elder son, Samuel (Howard W. Overshown), complains after his coiffure is jostled, ''You made me mess up my 'fro,'' recalling John Travolta's declaration ''You hit my hair'' in ''Saturday Night Fever''; and much is made of the contrast between Peggy's presumption to worldliness and the lack of sophistication of Samuel's girlfriend, LaTonya (Messeret Stroman), an excitable, loud-voiced young woman with a country accent and a penchant for hot pants.

The play, which has the enlivening feature of original music by the pop composer Nona Hendryx, is far more class- than race-conscious. Its title character, Blue Williams (Michael McElroy), a Luther Vandross-like pop crooner, does give the show a soulful soundtrack. Blue floats in and out, invisible to the cast but not to the audience, performing Ms. Hendryx's songs as a kind of haunting spirit. Peggy, it turns out, is obsessed with him.

But the affluent Clarks -- like the Huxtables, the television family of ''The Cosby Show,'' of which Ms. Rashad was famously a part -- have little to say about black culture as opposed to white culture, or about race relations in general. Of course they don't say anything about Jewish culture, either, which you may feel, given Mr. Randolph-Wright's penchant for wisecracking dialogue, is the main difference between the Clarks and one of Neil Simon's families.

The story, which takes place over about two decades, is standard family evolution stuff, narrated in retrospect by the elder version of Reuben (Hill Harper). And though there is a scandal that waits until near the end to be unveiled, the play is so thoroughly infused with middle-brow and middle-class wishful thinking that the Clarks end up the stronger for it. By the end you feel as if the pilot were over and the weekly series were about to begin.

Still and all, as presented by the Roundabout Theater Company and directed by Sheldon Epps, this is a polished and silky-smooth production, one that takes a largely familiar recipe and prepares it with élan. It's visually handsome but not fancy. The interior of the Clarks' home is rendered by the set designer, James Leonard Joy, as an airy two stories structured around an atrium, and the costumes, by Debra Bauer, are snazzy and particularly amusing in the first act with their depiction of 70's chic. And Ms. Hendryx's lush and melodic original songs are layered onto the narrative seamlessly.

Mr. Epps has guided the show to an unruffled pace; its two and half hours go down without impatience. And the cast (which includes Randall Shepperd as Samuel Jr., Peggy's husband; Chad Tucker as the young Reuben; and Jewell Robinson as Grandma Tillie) is uniformly at ease, which makes the ensemble work appealing. Ms. Rashad, as the play's late-emerging central figure, is quite deft in walking the line between Peggy's heavy-handed pretensions to cultural sophistication and societal stature and her self-conscious amusement at her own princesslike affect.

At Peggy's first entrance she's carrying two fur coats that she just bought, having been unable to decide between them, and Ms. Rashad, chuckling at her own folly, begins the process of letting us see in Peggy what her husband does; she's willful and controlling, yes, but needy, loving and unpredictable as well.

The most unusual feature of the play is Blue himself, whose role in the Clark family turns out to be more than mere musical inspiration. But for the better part of the story, Blue is something of a specter in a slick blue suit. He wanders the set, a dapper ghost, singing along with recordings of his music.

It adds a rather sodden layer of metaphor: ''Music is memory,'' declares the adult Reuben, looking back as the play begins. But it also adds a pleasing layer of entertainment. Even if ''Blue'' isn't a play that sends you out thinking, you might leave whistling.

“Messeret Stroman is delight... warmingly likable”

-The Washington Post

“Played with bubbly charm by Messeret Stroman”

-Broadway.com 

“The lovely Messeret Stroman imbues the girlfriend with charm and heart”

-USA Today

“From defeat, to comedy, to suspense, and then to triumph… a standing ovation”

-Makeda Viechweg, Harlem Community Newspaper

Read the Full Review

American Slavery Project presents the ABC's: Black Women and the Ballot

Review by Makeda Viechweg
Photo Credit: Wesley H. Crump

The American Slavery Project presented the ABC's (African Americans from Bondage through Crow Series): Black Women and the Ballot, three short plays about black women and suffrage at the National Black Theatre in Harlem on Monday April 8.

Producing Artistic Director Judy Tate, took the audience back to the year 1913 during the first short play, "Pulling the Lever" written by Tate herself, about three generations of black women recounting their experiences on attending the voting polls. The line from the play, "there's nothing wrong with letting history move you," set the tone for the evening.

In the second short play, "Don't/Dream", written by Saviana Stanescu, the Jamaican African-American actress Lynnette R. Freeman, who played an undocumented housekeeper, repeated the words "clean sink" throughout her 22 hour shift in a white family's home on voting day, bringing awareness to this form of voter suppression.

After the play Tate invited the audience to share their opinion of the piece. One noticed the blatant voters' suppression in the play, one suggested that these plays be taught in schools, and another picked up on the nuance of foster servitude. Tate also had the audience break off into pairs to talk about "the first time you've voted or any voting experience that you want to share."

Erica Norman reflected on her best voting experience. "I just remember that there was just this long line of black people that snaked its way back four miles in Orange County, Atlanta, Georgia for the five day early voting period. We were all there for Barack Obama and had bible scriptures in our hands just praying and thinking that this could actually happen. It was really an exciting time."

Within the midst of everyone sharing their voting stories, Tate took a moment to acknowledge the diverse group of people that sat before her. "This is the first time where I'm seeing such a diverse crowd, we have our young and old here, different races...I want to thank you all for coming out and your support."

The final play "In the Parlour" is a rendition of what happened when Delta Sigma Theta Sorority founder Edna Brown (Gabrielle C. Archer), President of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Nellie Quander (Celestine Rae), and Mary Church Terrell (Messeret Stroman Wheeler) who helped found the National Association for Colored Women, outsmarted Alice Paul (Montana Lambert Hoover), leader of the women's suffrage movement, into having black women march in the 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade in Washington D.C.

"In the Parlour" written by Judy Tate, had its full share of emotions. From defeat, to comedy, to suspense, and then to triumph, the four women earned themselves a standing ovation.

After the play Judy Tate led a panel discussion with a historian and members of the AKA and Delta sororities to talk about the unity of black women in the play, "In the Parlour" and the importance of sororities and HBCUs.

"Sororities are a lifetime commitment and the alumni is where it starts. In the play women didn't see eye to eye but still came together because of that unity," said AKA sorority President Andrea R. Webster. "It's about that sisterhood...doesn't matter where we are we still have to fight for that right," chimed in Delta Sigma Theta Sister Valencia Yearwood.

Delta Sigma Theta President Rory Mills said, "My takeaway from this play is that disagreement can be positive. This can move us forward."

Tate revealed that the play, "In the Parlour" came from a question that many ask when recounting historical events. "This play came out of the question: 'Where are the black women?' I mean we had to have been there. I went down the rabbit hole, researched and put this together and I believe this is very close to what happened. The timeline is real I just gave it humanity," said Tate.

The American Slavery Project is a theatrical response to revisionism in American discourse around enslavement and its aftermath through theatre, readings and developmental workshops. Visit www.americanslaveryproject.org for more information.

“Grace and a ferocious willpower… delves into the sorrow, while constantly holding to the light”

-Ross Haarstad, Ithaca Times

Read the Full Review

Civic Ensemble Lands Powerful Blow

The profound and shattering experience that is Judy Tate’s play Fast Blood plunges us into three Black lives on a slave plantation in the antebellum South while speaking urgently to the struggles of today, especially the ongoing strategy of separating of children from their families.

Tate writes with both scope and a painful, heart-tugging intimacy. At the center of her story are the enslaved couple, Effie and Ham, who encounter a near dead lynched man in the woods. Effie demands they cut him down and tend to him. This mysterious stranger calls himself Lazarus and claims he has a message for Ham.

What ensues is both a nail-biting drama as white forces scour the countryside for the missing body (Tate brilliantly reworks the tropes of 19th century melodrama) ßand a harrowing yet deeply spiritual journey into the past, all centered on Mama Tuni, a woman of magic and wisdom, the “Last African” shipped out of West Africa and being used as a brood mare by plantation owner Massa Calhoun.

Fast blood refers to blood that readily comes to the surface, a trait that might save an enslaved person from a longer whipping. While highly theatricalized, the play doesn’t flinch from such moments of violence not as a voyeuristic ‘victim trauma’ but as a deeply implicating witnessing of everyday horror.

Stark choices face Effie and Ham; at the beginning Ham argues for the expedient measure of self-preservation, release Lazarus to death and bury him. Effie, once a midwife, argues for life and healing. Lazarus argues for freedom and retribution. Each choice is deeply human, wholly understandable, and fraught with consequences.

Gender is as much in play as race. Effie undertakes a journey to rid herself of the notion of herself as property, even to Ham. Mary Calhoun, the half-mad wife of the plantation owner is beset by jealousy over her husband’s ‘preference’ for Mama Tuti.

The violence of chattel slavery and a particularly American patriarchy are set against each character’s ability to choose a path, to carve out a life that might even include honor and redemption; such a choice is even given to the initially comic white boy, G.K. Where in the depths of trauma and injustice, Tate asks, can we find the possibility of redemption.

A short review cannot do adequate justice to the brilliance of this text nor its soaring poetry. Tate writes mesmerizing monologues easily comparable to August Wilson, for instance, but re-centering her narrative on the women’s experiences. And she has great flashes of humor, especially in the relationship of Ham and Effie.

Beth F. Milles directs with compassion, force and clarity. Civic Ensemble’s Artistic Director Godfrey Simmons has chosen to present the story outdoors, in the rustic Maggie Goldsmith Amphitheatre (scenic consultant, Norm Johnson) and Milles weaves in the outdoors as part of the story at one point, Mary Calhoun sits like a ghost by a lightning-struck oak. The action is propelled by Derek Goddard’s drumming and actors provide the sounds of wind, hounds and a crying baby.

Messeret Stroman Wheeler inhabits Effie with grace and a ferocious willpower. Her performance strokes Tate’s poetry and delves into the sorrow, while constantly holding to the light. Saba Weatherspoon plays the Young Effie with stalwartness and ease. Vernice P. Miller radiates power, fierce maternal longing, and defiant honesty in her portrait of Mama Tuni. Rounding out the women, Sarah K. Chalmers brings a roiling chaos of pain and desperation to the almost ghostly Mary Calhoun.

Godfrey L. Simmons Jr. brings to Ham the sense of a long life of survival, of a soul anchored deep within, yet still a man confounded by his ‘woman.’ Simmons mixes humor, bluster, and an aching vulnerability. As Lazarus, Ryan Hope Travis is at first a stunning, staggering presence, coursing with rage and power. Yet tenderness also grows in this ravaged man.

Jacob White gives starkly honest portraits of the lecherous Calhoun and the combative Jason Mann while Joshua Sedelmeyer neatly shows G.K.’s frailty and underlying goodness.

“Beautifully performed… funny, poignant, sad, and honest”

-Les Gutman, Curtain Up

Read the Full Review

Written by Charles Randolph-Wright
Directed by Charles Randolph-Wright
Produced by Arena Stage and Roundabout Theatre Company

Tillie Clark (Jewell Robinson) can't believe her son is married to that woman. Neither can the woman's sons. Peggy Clark (Phylicia Rashad) is a duck out of water: she's miserable, and seems to relish spreading her infelicity around. On a visit to Chicago in the 1960's, Samuel Clark, Jr. (Randall Shepperd) swept Peggy off the Ebony Fashion Fair runway, brought her home to Kent, S. C., and married her. It's the late seventies now and her antics seem to roll off his back. 

Only two things assuage Peggy: Samuel's money -- he runs the family's successful funeral home and never chafes at her credit card bills -- and the music of Blue Williams (Michael McElroy), to which she listens incessantly. She's a proud snob, a lousy homemaker and we might as well go ahead and etch her name into the record books at the Motherhood Hall of Shame. Growing up, her older son, Sam (Howard W. Overshown), is a rebellious teen she's always putting down, while her younger son, Reuben (Chad Tucker), is a sensitive Mama's Boy she dotes over. Peggy is trying to mold Reuben into a musician like her idol. Sam accidentally gets on his mother's good side at one point, when he starts dating LaTonya Dinkins (Messeret Stroman), a hick chick Peggy can barely look at until she discovers the girl shares her obsession with Blue. Peggy takes LaTonya under her wing, but it won't last long.

Blue opens as a memory play centering on Reuben as a grown man (Hill Harper), roughly today. In the first act, Harper shadows his younger colleague, sometimes reciting lines in unison with him, sometimes engaging in conversation with him (but never with anyone else). In the second act, set fifteen years after the first, Harper takes over the role, with Tucker sometimes looming as the younger self. In the intervening time, we discover that Sam has traded in his oversized Afro for a Brooks Brothers look -- he's running the family business in his father's footsteps -- while Reuben, having never succeeded as a musician, is living in Seattle, sporting dreadlocks and trying to get something going as a music producer. He returns home, angry, and discovers something about himself much of the audience probably had guessed already.

Randolph-Wright's framing device doesn't add much to this play, and truth be told, the show would probably be better off without it. It's shortcomings are compounded by the way in which Blue's character is handled. Throughout the show, he appears, onstage or above it, singing (music by Nona Hendryx) to Peggy but not actually there. So we end up with dueling "visions". This takes nothing away from McElroy's performance -- he is an engaging singer who does a fine job of evoking the sort of soft jazz/"quiet storm" sensibility into which Blue's music has evolved.

Stripped of these elements, Blue is a finely written, well-directed, and beautifully performed piece. Randolph-Wright has a nicely honed ear for these characters' dialogue, rendering it funny, poignant, sad, and honest. The actors, many of whom are reprising their roles from the original production of Blue at DC's Arena Stage and whose work here shows the patina of their sustained effort, work well together as an ensemble and individually. Especially noteworthy are the efforts of Phylicia Rashad, best known as Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show, but just as worthy of attention for her subtle portrayal of Peggy; Jewell Robinson, who makes the strong-willed and tongued grandmother a highlight of the play's comedy without overstepping; and, less circumscribed but no less appealing, Messeret Stroman. Randall Shepperd and Howard Overshown (in the second act) do remarkably well conveying the polished agreeability of the successful undertaker -- a discrete gregariousness -- along the father-son continuum.

Debra Bauer's costumes are particularly good -- from the frighteningly accurate 70's wear of the first act to the more reasonable clothing of the recent past. She gives Peggy a series of lovely outfits that exemplify her taste, shows LaTonya's transition from "common" to pseudo-sophisticate and back again and installs Blue in a sharkskin suit that simmers in just the right way. Michael Gilliam's lighting is also first rate, which brings us to James Leonard Joy's set design which, although eliciting threshold satisfaction, proves to be particularly annoying. He chose to solve the show's many scene changes by means of motorized shifting of backdrops and furniture which unpardonably and noisily interferes with stage action, to the point of drawing focus.

This is, I believe, the first show to transfer to New York from Arena Stage (which commissioned the work and where Randolph-Wright is now officially associated) since The Great White Hope in 1968. While it might not quite rise to the level of that play, it's a most worthwhile addition to the theatrical literature.

“Strong performances by Stroman… substance and depth, expertly delivered”

-David Mackler, The Off-Off Broadway Review

Read the Full Review

Written by Melissa Maxwell
Directed by Melissa Maxwell
Produced by New Perspectives Theatre Company

In a program note, playwright/director Melissa Maxwell writes that her play's "overall theme is universal" even as "most of the situations are specific to black folk." To which the only reply is "yes, absolutely" and "absolutely not!" But while six of the eight scenes of Unrequited Love have the soul of a sitcom, its heart is in the right place. It is in the last two scenes that Maxwell finds her balance, and where the real strength of her play lies.

Telephone Tag sets up the kind of communication dissonance that runs through Love -- when Brenda (Nadhege Alexandré) calls Kevin (George Spencer), a man she met at a party, another woman answers. The audience knows the woman (Messeret Stroman) is his sister, but Brenda doesn't. The scenes of this mini-drama play out in between the rest of the playlets, the conclusion of which -- well, more on it later.

The second scene, Nothing Personal, depends on a joke that is obvious almost immediately, which also seems recycled from a show on the WB network. A woman (Tiffany Adams) interviews several men to fill a position. Two don't measure up (Spencer, Devin Haqq), but the third (Erik LaRay Harvey) not only meets all qualifications, but has his own demands.

Misery Loves Company had Haqq and Harvey as construction workers with very different approaches to women -- one catcalls after each one who passes, the other loves his girlfriend. Why be exclusive to a woman who's got to be using you, the dog asks, and the other one lets his confidence slowly be sapped.

3 Blind Mice featured strong performances by Stroman, Adams and Alexandré as women with different approaches to men, but each one strikes out. To make matters worse, all three are dissed in favor of white women, represented by two-dimensional cutouts, humorously designed by Ken Goldstein and Lynette Scoles. The girls argue about position and success, but there's no question that the rejection stings. Hard.

It's a Jungle also depends on one readily apparent joke, with Spencer as a soldier under fire giving rules for survival. "Never let your guard down," "the enemy isn't who you think it is" -- of course he's talking about women. Spencer and strikingly good sound effects kept it painless.

Ships in the Night limns the frustrations of a couple (Haqq and Adams) whose different work schedules (he's a 9-to-5er, she's a nurse on the night shift) cause friction as they make promises, quarrel, and use the internet to flirt, and possibly connect, with strangers.

But with All God's Chil'un' Maxwell has a heartbreaking winner. Stroman is a young girl on her cell phone excited about a date and minding a baby. Through her conversation the details of her life are revealed, as well as her hopes and dreams. But this character drama is not punch-line-driven, and Stroman played it perfectly. The reasons for getting a toothcap, for example, were never this chilling, but the character herself is oblivious. Finally, Unrequited Love has substance and depth, expertly delivered.

What follows, Jeopardized, is a sharp satire about attitudes and lifestyles. Sure it's obvious, but it was made even sharper by the performances of Spencer, Haqq, and especially Adams as contestants, and Harvey as the smarmy emcee.

And all along the story of Kevin and Brenda has moved along with typical fits and starts, culminating in their meeting. Neither is who the other was expecting, and it seems like a complete bust until it turns out Brenda likes basketball. At least now they have something to argue about. This echo of Bacharach and David's Promises, Promises is probably coincidental, but it also shows that except for the language, in 35 years not all that much about the war between men and women has changed. Still, it's a hopeful note on which to end the evening.

Brenda has moved along with typical fits and starts, culminating in their meeting. Neither is who the other was expecting, and it seems like a complete bust until it turns out Brenda likes basketball. At least now they have something to argue about. This echo of Bacharach and David's Promises, Promises is probably coincidental, but it also shows that except for the language, in 35 years not all that much about the war between men and women has changed. Still, it's a hopeful note on which to end the evening.

“Extraordinary work... sensitive, funny, sharply nuanced”

-NYTheatre.com

"Vibrant... priceless comic timing"

-Bob Mondello, Washington City Paper

Read the Full Review

Lady Hears the Blues

Last week, when Julie Harris arrived in Arena Stage's Papa, this week, it's Phylicia Rashad in Blue. If one more TV star comes to town in a stage sitcom, I'm going to have to stop congratulating myself on having a better rig than television critics.

After all, having sat through Charles Randolph-Wright's cute but almost bel-canto-free dramaturgy in domestic drama-dy Blue, at Arena Stage, I now have to spend several hundred words talking not about the Clarks, the funeral-home-owning South Carolina family who will reside for the next six weeks in the house the Tyrones and the Vanderhoffs built with all those long day's journeys you can't take with you.

The Clarks are blacker from their orchestrated theatrical predecessors in two significant ways: they're African-American, and they're populating a script that really belongs on the Fox network. TV must bloom on Fridays, which is evidently the day Samuel Clark Jr. (Randall Shepperd) always invites his cranky mother, Tillie (Jewell Robinson), over so she can complain about his wife's cooking. They both know that Peggy Clark (Rashad) doesn't actually touch the food she serves until after some local Italian has prepared it—she's too busy listening to her favorite jazz vocalist. But the truth is, they're a pretty tranquil family, playing so safe takes them on supposedly home-cooked journeys to a different country each week.

So do her sons, Sam III (Randall Shepperd), whose puffed-up Afro and platform shoes (it's the '70s) give him a 6-inch height advantage when he kisses his parents, and Reuben (Desmond Newsom), who converses intermittently with his operatic jazz-singer father (Michael Warren), who isn't actually known to the playwright. There's one other spectral presence on the premises, singer Blue Williams (Arnold McCuller), a honey-voiced, Al Green-like crooner who materializes in an azure spotlight whenever Peggy puts one of his records on the turntable.

The cuisine on this particular Friday is Italian, but the word "country" is uttered only as a reference to the less-than-affluent girlfriend young Sam has brought home to dinner. Peggy thinks sweet but gawky LaTonya (played with a broad, character-defining drawl by Messeret Stroman) is way too country for her son, and she asserts in a line that pretty much sets the tone for the evening that "someone must de-tramp this family." But when LaTonya turns out to have every Blue Williams album ever released, the two instead become bosom buddies, with Peggy guiding the younger woman in a sort of pet project and showing her how to class up her act. Later they have a falling-out for reasons it would be unfair to reveal, because so much of this sitcom's com is sit-dependent. Suffice it to say that Act 2 leaps forward 15 years and explains everything in a series of confrontations between the adult Reuben and his mother.

Randolph-Wright has been saying in interviews that he wrote Blue in response to a fairly specific challenge from his manager—"you need to write the Neil Simon black family"—and I suppose he's met that challenge, if what his manager meant was the cardboard-thin family in Barefoot in the Park.

I'm not sure, however, why ersatz-Simon should appeal to Arena's powers that be. The theater—which was founded 50 years ago to provide an alternative to the commercial drivel Broadway sent on tour, while Simon was cutting his teeth as a playwright—has never offered to raise the curtain on Simon plays. The theory has always been that such shows as The Odd Couple and Come Blow Your Horn are perfectly appropriate in commercial theaters, but that audiences go to regional stages looking for something a tad more substantial.

What makes Blue an appropriate choice for Arena, according to the troupe's program notes (which mention Randolph-Wright in the same breath as Shakespeare, Molière, and Ibsen, incidentally), is that the thriving family being depicted is clearly African-American. This fact, says the program, makes the play "a lesson in cultural preservation" in a dramatic landscape where Americans of color are rarely depicted as prosperous or as being at the center of a community's life.

Point taken. That premise is undeniably valid, even if it seems undercut somewhat by the stat's familiarity to millions as the matriarch of a prosperous black family on TV. Not that the existence of The Cosby Show in any way diminishes the underlying culturally adaptive efforts made to bring a dearth of films, TV shows, and theater plays reflecting the lives of African-Americans to an audience that a case could be made has nothing that attempts to do so deserves production.

Still, ideas and content matter, and Blue isn't what most Arena patrons probably expect from the nation's most prominent regional theater in terms of quality. It's a commercial comedy at heart and in execution, two steps up from Your Mother's Butt but several steps back to the playwriting of the early Neil Simon. By the beginning of the '70s, he had stopped writing joke-strewn displays of the sort criticked in here, and I don't recall that there was ever a point in his career when he would have stooped to picking on an elderly character say "lock" in front of her grandchild to get a laugh.

I would be remiss if I didn't note that a substantial portion of Blue's opening-night crowd guffawed at granny's cussing and behaved throughout the evening as if it were auditioning to record a laugh track. On occasion, this raucous response seemed justified by the events on stage, but not as often as one might have wished, and almost never by granny's drop-in-the-bucket lines. Fortunately, Randolph-Wright has a director's sense of situation: he staged Arena's sharp, motivator-savvy Guys and Dolls earlier this season, so the quandaries in which his characters find themselves are frequently funny even when his writing isn't.

Blue's actual director, Sheldon Epps, likes to keep things moving, including the turntable that whisks the characters from living to dining room and from front steps to funeral parlor. He has encouraged his actors to give polished performances—which is perfectly appropriate, however lessis being precisely what the material calls for (at least until the grown-up Reuben has a second-act crisis, which Wiggins is required to play as a full-fledged emotional meltdown).

Epps doesn't, however, make much sense of the spectral character who is the play's trickiest conceit. Their presence doesn't affect the action in dramatically useful way, and his staging doesn't help matters by literally being easy-show biz rather than greedily blue.

Even after you realize that the guy no one but the 12-year-old Reuben sees is the older Reuben, he never tells his younger self anything terribly important. Frankly, if he did, it's hard to know what we could make of it. Similarly, the title character's abrupt switching whenever Peggy's stylus touches vinyl functions as a mere staging device. Blue's songs (written by Nona Hendryx and Randolph-Wright) are pleasant enough, but if their lyrics connect with the dilemmas the characters are facing, their relevance slipped right by me.

On the other hand, McCuller sells them to the rafters in a voice that's as sexy as it is assured, and he's equally persuasive when allowed to interact with another character in the second act. Rashad's level-headedness is quite naturally vibrant, and has priceless comic timing. Newsom's "country" interjects is really vibrant, and has precise comic timing. Warren's "country" interjects is really and vibrant, and has precise comic timing. But their scenes together are brief, and Shepperd's patriarchal befuddlement anchors the evening, and the cast's work is pretty sharp as well.

Friday evening is going to be a letdown for another man who thinks he's in a bid, cranking outward of $30-ticket crediles them to people whose intellectual content even in light comedies. And although dissenters from the standing ovation on opening night appeared to be in the minority, they were definitely present.

Still, it's a certainty that the best and least disputable line of the evening was uttered not by an actor, but by an elderly Arena subscriber at intermission: He had plenty of soft drinks and juice at the high-fabled locale just back of the auditorium, but the counter in front of him was littered with empty one-shot bottles, and he had to apologize for being one clearly out of bourbon.

"It's a real hard-liquor night," he explained, inadvertently summing up the whole experience in six words.