Belozah (Kene Holiday) and Windy Willow (Toni Seawright) discuss the devil and black magic in SOWA’S RED GRAVY (photo by Gerrie Goodstein)
Castillo Theatre
543 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Thursday – Sunday through November 18, $25
212-941-1234
www.castillo.org/sowa
Adapted from her 2002 book, Sowa’s Red Gravy Stories for Broken Hearted Gals, published by Harlem Writers Guild Press, Diane Richards’s Sowa’s Red Gravy is more a collection of interrelated character sketches and brief skits than a cohesive play. Presented by Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre at the Castillo on West 42nd St., the show centers around a narrator named Sowa (Lonette McKee), a 110-year-old voodoo woman who is in love with Sapphire (Jonathan Peck), a man who can’t stop his cheating ways with Luwana (Kimberly “Q”), a practitioner of black magic. Sowa’s best friend, Windy Willow (Toni Seawright), is a lesbian witch who wants her to dump Sapphire; she also refuses to help Anxiety Man (Aaron Fried), a white man looking for something to cure his ills. Overseeing it all is the devilish griot Belozah (Kene Holiday), resplendent in a dazzling red suit and dark hat and glasses. The characters go back and forth between addressing the audience directly and participating in the onstage narrative, which often gets confusing. A few of the set pieces stand out, including an animal dance performed by Iris Wilson, Gary E. Vincent praising the lord as Reverend Mose Walker, and Matlock and Carter Country’s Holiday delightfully chewing up masses of scenery in several entertaining monologues. “I tell you what,” Belozah says in the play’s best speech. “There is no way in heaven or hell that I’ma do without my women, wine, and black juicy-ass cigars. I like me some big-booty women, I’m gone drank red-hot flaming wine and smoke me up some black juicy-ass cigars. Try and stop me. . . . Ain’t givin’ ’em up for nobody. So they can send all the angels, all the devas, and all the spirits, even send that favorite son and his weak disciples, stupid sissies, to start up shit. Hot dog! It’s on!” Unfortunately, Tony nominee McKee (Show Boat) is flat as Sowa; on the night we went, she scored her biggest laugh when she committed a very funny Freudian slip that she playfully acknowledged. Though good-natured and well meaning, Sowa’s Red Gravy, directed by King, turns out to be a mix of interesting ingredients that never quite come together to form a satisfying meal.