A family gathers to say farewell to its patriarch in madcap Chicken & Biscuits (photo © Emilio Madrid)
Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Through January 2, $69.50
chickenandbiscuitsbway.com
I was in serious need of some unabashed laughter when I entered Circle in the Square last week, and that’s precisely what writer Douglas Lyons, director Zhailon Levingston, and a fab cast of eight delivered with the madcap comedy Chicken & Biscuits. It’s a divine stew of familiar plot points stirred together in an appealing way, set in a vibrant Black church community, a throwback to the popular crowd pleasers of the 1930s to 1960s that have been popularized more recently by Tyler Perry onstage and onscreen.
Much of the cast and crew are making their Broadway debuts, so the play gets a bit ragged and repetitive at times and is too long at more than two hours, but it’s a ton of fun nonetheless. Set designer Lawrence E. Moten III has transformed the intimate space into St. Luke’s Church in New Haven, with four mobile pews, stained-glass windows, and a pair of kitschy religious portraits. The patriarch of the Jenkins family, Father Bernard, has passed on, and his relatives are gathering to send him off to his beloved late wife in style. Well, kind of.
New pastor Reginald Mabry (Norm Lewis), the husband of Bernard’s oldest daughter, the God-fearing Baneatta (Cleo King), is worried about the eulogy he is preparing, while Baneatta is not looking forward to seeing her sister, the hard-partying, loud, and demonstrative Beverly (Ebony Marshall-Oliver), who arrives with her soon-to-be-sixteen-year-old, glued-to-her-smartphone daughter, the sarcastic La’Trice Franklin (Aigner Mizzelle).
Baneatta is none-too-happy that her son, Kenny (Devere Isaac Rogers), has brought his boyfriend, the white, Jewish nerd Logan (Michael Urie), who has no idea what he’s gotten himself into. Kenny’s older sister, Simone (Alana Raquel Bowers), shows up solo.
“Lord . . . please give me your strength on today,” Baneatta says at the beginning. “Bless me with your patience to deal with my family, for they know not what they do. Lord, help me keep my eyeballs rolled forward, as they have a tendency to roll backwards around foolishness. And Lord, keep me from strangling my baby sister, no matter how much she tests me. For you and I both know . . . she’ll try it. Keep all things unlike you at bay.”
Circle in the Square is transformed into a church in Chicken & Biscuits (photo © Emilio Madrid)
A hilarious farce ensues, as the funeral attendees cut one another down and their private aspirations pop out all over. Wearing a glittering, tight outfit more appropriate for a sleazy nightclub, Beverly tells La’Trice, “They say the best place to find a husband is inside God’s house, and that’s exactly what Beverly will be doing. ’Cause your triflin’ daddy ain’t good for nothing but his child support check, so every new day is an opportunitay.” La’Trice asks, “Even at Grandpa’s funeral?” Beverly responds, “It ain’t a funeral, it’s a celebration! That’s the problem with Black folk, our mindset, always stuck in tradition. Why we gotta wear black, huh? We already Black! We should be honoring my daddy in style, color! Hell, canary yellow was his favorite, and he wore it like a pimp. Shit, he taught me good fashion!”
Logan, a kind of onstage representative of the white theatergoing audience that suddenly finds themselves inside a Black church, says to Kenny, “I’m penetrating a private cultural tradition.” Kenny asks, “Why penetrating?” Logan answers, “It’s like a reverse Get Out, and we all know how that ended.”
The plot thickens when a mysterious woman (NaTasha Yvette Williams) steps up to the pulpit to share her thoughts about Bernard, and all hell breaks loose.
Dede Ayite’s ebullient costumes and Nikiya Mathis’s spectacular wig, hair, and makeup design are key ingredients in Chicken & Biscuits, adding plenty of sweetness and spice. The cast, led by Lewis (Porgy and Bess, The Phantom of the Opera) in his first Broadway nonmusical and King (Jelly’s Last Jam, Beau) in her Great White Way bow, is clearly having a ball, keeping the audience howling with laughter and breaking into spontaneous applause — as well as shouts as if we were all at Sunday service. “Why is everyone screaming at him?” Logan asks Kenny during a call-and-response part of Reginald’s sermon. Sure, it can get too sitcomy, but so what? Not all of the courses are delicious, but there are more than enough savory moments to make the show worthy of a very favorable Yelp review.
The last time I was at Circle in the Square was for Daniel Fish’s controversial Oklahoma!, which included free chili for everyone at intermission. Alas, there are no chicken and biscuits for the audience in Chicken & Biscuits, but there are plenty of tasty treats to satisfy the soul.