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.
"This is the first time I've had a role for this long," gasps Ryan Bernier. "We just hit our 300th performance of the show in Detroit in January!"
The show is Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue, a warmly loving, gut-bustingly funny stage parody of the hit NBC series that ran for seven seasons from 1985 to 1992, and lives on in perpetuity in reruns. Bernier portrays Dorothy, made iconic by the indomitable and legendary late Bea Arthur, for whom the 6'3" actor is also a dead ringer.
To prepare for the role, which Bernier plays in full drag, he "consumed everything that Bea Arthur had ever done -- and we're talking from Maude to her brief gig on the Star Wars Holiday Special to her brief voiceover role in Futurama. She was a performer who really found a way to bring all of the tools in her toolbox to every project that she picked up.
The school outcast and the popular new kid in town make beautiful music together in the sweet, straightforward gay coming-of-age dramedy Bonus Track.
Mop-haired teen misfit George (Joe Anders), entering his final year at St. Sebastian's Catholic School in small-town West Yorkshire, England, isn't all that different from his peers. He's just utterly himself -- that is, introverted, a wee bit eccentric, and totally obsessed with pop and rock music.
Generally a loner, George collects and catalogs cassette tapes of his favorite artists' interviews and performances, which is only slightly weird for a 17-year-old in 2006. Yet, he's bullied relentlessly by the boys and girls at St. Sebastian's. In turn, he dreams of one day showing them all when he's playing sold-out arenas as a pop superstar.
Blessed with a sweet yet sturdy redemption story, Sister Act, based on the hit 1992 film starring Whoopi Goldberg, is a natural fit as a screen-to-stage musical.
The tale of lounge singer Deloris Van Cartier hiding out from her murderous crime boss boyfriend in the last place he'd think to look for her -- a convent full of singing nuns -- eagerly lends itself to set-pieces full of singing and dancing.
Composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater's score of catchy original tunes are paired with a solid book by Cheri Steinkellner and Bill Steinkellner, and additional material by Douglas Carter Beane.
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