The Colored Museum: Ayanna Bria Bakari, Kelli Blackwell, William Oliver Watkins, Iris Beaumier – Photo: Teresa Castracane
Studio Theatre has resplendently re-opened The Colored Museum, George C. Wolfe’s biting survey of Black American history, myth, humor, and representation in art and culture.
The entrance and stage of Studio’s Victor Shargai Theatre comprise the galleries, displaying artifacts on the play’s themes, created by students from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.
Works hung inside the theater, and even the seating, envelope the audience within Psalmayene 24’s environmental production, shrewdly designed by Natsu Onoda Power.
The prime exhibits on view at the Colored Museum are eleven brilliantly-written sketches encompassing centuries of Black lives, since African ancestors arrived in America as cargo, up to the modern age of so-called liberation. On ages of perceptions and misconceptions, Wolfe’s stories speak truth with lacerating wit, and subvert stereotypes with deceptive ease.
It takes a quick company to keep up, and Psalmayene — who’s been impressively busy and beautifully productive across four different shows this past season — has assembled an ensemble that’s up to the task, and always in on the joke.
Not everyone in the house will be sure when to laugh as the exhibits dip fearlessly into discomforting waters. “Fasten your shackles,” warns flight attendant Miss Pat (Ayanna Bria Bakari), in preparation for the first sketch, our hazardous voyage across the Middle Passage aboard the Celebrity Slave Ship.
“And please ignore the drums,” she adds. But the drumbeat travels the Middle Passage with us, of course, carries us through every chapter, every exhibit — literally, in the form of percussionist Jabari Exum, a masterful presence onstage.
Presence only begins to describe the myriad qualities Kelli Blackwell brings to multiple roles throughout, including in the incendiary TV spoof “Cookin’ with Aunt Ethel.” Grinning wide, Aunt Ethel stirs up a saucy recipe for her viewers, with “rage” and “attitude” among the spicy ingredients. What could she be cookin’ up?
The taste surely will be bittersweet, as is most of the comedy, riding somewhere between silly and seething, and calibrated to perfection by Blackwell, Bakari, Iris Beaumier, and William Oliver Watkins in “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play,” the evening’s best of a murderer’s row of great sketches.
An absolutely hysterical parody of all the sorts of stereotypical stage drama Black theater talent have felt confined to, “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play” finds this ensemble firing at their sharpest.
And, juxtaposed with solid solo sketches like Matthew Elijah Webb’s powerful turn in “The Gospel According to Miss Roj,” and duos like Webb and Watkins doing “Symbiosis,” the Mama-on-the-Couch sketch highlights how fluidly Psalmayene moves the revue through its many transitions, setups, genres, and emotions.
The ensemble ends the Mama-on-the-Couch sketch belting gospel, hitting subtle notes of humor, courtesy of composer Kysia Bostic. The notes could have been less subtle, technically, with better amplification for the vocalists.
Although, judging subtlety as it pertains to satire will probably depend on how one empathizes with the pain and rage and attitude that underscore all the humor.
The Colored Museum: Iris Beaumier, Kelli Blackwell, and Ayanna Bria Bakari – Photo: Teresa Castracane
In the ridiculous but oh-so-profound sketch “The Hairpiece,” a single lady (Blackwell) is confronted by her two outspoken wigs — one an Afro (Beaumier), the other long, straight, and flowing (Bakari) — over not just which hair to wear, but what kind of Black woman she must be.
In “Symbiosis,” Watkins portrays a man who’d trash any and every connection to his Blackness — his records, his Afro pick, his first pair of Converse sneakers — in order to get ahead.
Does making progress — advancing the race, as they used to say — require killing off past selves, abandoning who you were for what you aim to be?
Or, are we all better off if we preserve even the painful reminders, keep that history safe, well-curated, and conveniently close, so someday, hopefully, we can look back from a better place and laugh?
The Colored Museum (★★★★☆) runs through Aug. 11 at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. Tickets are $40 to $95, with discount options available. Call 202-332-3300 or visit www.StudioTheatre.org.
Putting aside the curious question of why the Shakespeare Theatre Company has taken to staging musical theater -- this season it's Guys and Dolls -- the happy news is that director Francesca Zambello doesn't need to keep her day job (although let's hope she does).
She may be the artistic director of the Washington National Opera, but she's clearly got the eye, ear, and vision for a whole different kind of crowd. This is no-holds-barred Golden Age rom-com song-and-dance magic brought fully to life with some serious spectacle. From scenic designer Walt Spangler's mind-blowing industrial shop space, with all its peeling paint and careworn shop décor, to a live orchestra conducted with complete and utter flair by James Lowe, it's something to behold.
Is willowy Londoner Bella truly going mad, or is her enigmatic husband Jack carrying out a devious plot to convince her she's losing her mind? And if so, to what end? In modern terms, Bella is desperately pondering whether Jack is trying to gaslight her into thinking she's going insane.
The terminology and the plot of Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson's Deceived, now at Everyman Theatre, derive from Patrick Hamilton's Victorian thriller Gas Light, which premiered in 1938, before being adapted into the Oscar-winning 1944 film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman as distressed newlywed Paula.
Not since Hedwig and the Angry Inch have I so enjoyed a one-person musical about an internationally ignored female artist overshadowed by her famous male partner as much as I enjoyed Rebecca Simmonds and Jack Miles' enchanting In Clay.
Making its American premiere at Signature Theatre, following sellout runs in London, the jazz-infused portrait of early-20th-century French ceramicist and painter Marie-Berthe Cazin doesn't have too much else in common with hard-rocking Hedwig. Except that both shows are powered by a knockout batch of songs, and the galvanizing force of a woman reclaiming her time, her art, and her story.
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