Tag Archives: Jessica Frances Dukes

TROUBLE IN MIND

Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind finally makes it to Broadway after sixty-six years (photo by Joan Marcus)

TROUBLE IN MIND
American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 9, $39-$250
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

In 1955, Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind was destined to be the first play by a Black woman writer to be staged on Broadway. However, when the white producers insisted that Childress use a rewritten happy ending instead of her original one, she adamantly refused. Four years later, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and became a much-revived classic while Trouble in Mind languished in relative obscurity, occasionally performed by small companies and schools.

The play has finally made its Broadway debut, in an uneven Roundabout production at the American Airlines Theatre. Right before it begins, an announcement explains that it is being presented exactly as Childress wrote it, without one word being changed. In the hands of director Charles Randolph-Wright, that might not have been the best idea, as this Trouble in Mind, which can be laugh-out-loud funny and sharply poignant and prescient, too often feels stilted and repetitive as Childress reveals the systemic racism and misogyny baked into the theater, which is still all too relevant today.

It’s the fall of 1957, and a group of actors are arriving at a Broadway theater to start rehearsals for Chaos in Belleville, a play by an unseen white man named Melton about racism, sharecropping, and lynching. The cast consists of the bitter Wiletta Mayer (LaChanze), a middle-aged Black actress who has grown sick and tired of playing mammies, maids, and slaves; Millie Davis (Jessica Frances Dukes), a younger Black actress who loves fancy outfits and likes to sting Wiletta about her advanced age; Sheldon Forrester (Chuck Cooper), an elderly Black character actor who usually doesn’t stir the pot but is concerned about certain aspects of Chaos; John Nevins (Brandon Micheal Hall), a young Black actor with dreams of success; Judy Sears (Danielle Campbell), a white Yale woke grad; and Bill O’Wray (Don Stephenson), an established white actor who declines to have lunch with his Black colleagues. Al Manners (Michael Zegen) is the white director who is so determined to have a hit that he fails to understand the inherent racism of the script and the needs of his cast; Eddie Fenton (Alex Mickiewicz) is the white stage manager and Manners’s right-hand man, and Henry (Simon Jones) is an elderly white doorman who has seen it all.

Wiletta (LaChanze) teaches John (Brandon Micheal Hall) a thing or two about the business as Sheldon (Chuck Cooper) looks on (photo by Joan Marcus)

“I think the theater is the grandest place in the world, and I plan to go right to the top,” John tells Wiletta, who tries to set him straight. “Show business, it’s just a business. Colored folks ain’t in no theater,” she says, explaining how he should act in front of white people, pretending to laugh at their jokes. “White folks can’t stand unhappy Negroes . . . so laugh, laugh when it ain’t funny at all,” she strongly advises.

John and Millie believe Chaos is an important work. “I hope I can do a good job and that people learn something from this play,” Millie says naively. Sheldon just hopes that everything goes smoothly, regardless of the content of the play. “Do, Lord, let’s keep the peace,” he says. “Last thing I was in, the folks fought and argued so, the man said he’d never do a colored show again . . . and he didn’t!”

Manners claims he is seeking authenticity, espousing, “I want truth. What is truth? Truth is simply whatever you can bring yourself to believe, that is all.” But his idea of truth is more about financial success than the inherent racism in the play, which starts to come out as some of the actors can’t hold back their thoughts any longer, including Judy, who shouts, “Oh, I get so mad about this prejudice nonsense! It’s a wonder colored people don’t go out and kill somebody, I mean actually, really do it . . . bloody murder, you know?”

Henry (Simon Jones) makes a point to Wiletta (LaChanze) in Trouble in Mind (photo by Joan Marcus)

Childress, who grew up in Charleston and Harlem and wrote such other plays as Florence and Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White (being revived in the spring by TFANA) in addition to the young adult novels A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich and the Pulitzer Prize-nominated A Short Walk, cuts to the heart of racism in theater in Trouble in Mind; she was inspired to write it after appearing with Georgia Burke in the 1944 Broadway show Anna Lucasta, basing the character of Wiletta on Burke. She also references the idea of being forced to make script changes. “Melton is so stubborn, won’t change a line,” Eddie tells Manners, who replies “But he did.” Eddie adds, “Yes, but so stubborn.” Manners concludes, “A genius should be stubborn.”

Tony winner LaChanze (The Color Purple, The Secret Life of Bees) is radiant as Wiletta, who is bold and strong, caught in between wanting to continue her career but no longer able to hold back what she thinks. (As a bonus, LaChanze gets to belt out a song too.) In her Broadway debut, Dukes (Is God Is; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark) excels as Wiletta’s nemesis, each costume (by Emilio Sosa) making statements of their own.

Zegen (Bad Jews, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) overplays his hand as Manners, while Tony winner Cooper (The Life, Avenue X) is cooped up by Randolph-Wright’s (Motown the Musical, Ruined) often stagnant direction, not making enough use of Arnulfo Maldonado’s long, deep set. At one point Manners says, “I definitely know what I want and however unorthodox my methods, I promise never to bore you.” Unfortunately, that’s just what happens, especially in the second act. It’s as if Randolph-Wright has such reverence for Childress’s stand to make no revisions that he lets the pace drag as every word she wrote is delivered with the same emphasis, leaving the production feeling more like a historical document than the gripping drama it should be.

OFF BROADWAY

Who: Dylan Baker, Becky Ann Baker, Jessica Frances Dukes, Jason Butler Harner, Hal Linden, Jillian Mercado, Richard Kind, Kara Wang
What: New streaming play by Torrey Townsend, directed by Robert O’Hara
Where: Broadstream
When: June 24-27, free with RSVP
Why: Playwright Torrey Townsend (The Workshop, Executioners) and director Robert O’Hara (Antebellum, BootyCandy) started working on the new play Off Broadway prior to the Covid-19 crisis, but it has been reimagined for online viewing, about a nonprofit theater that suddenly has to reinvent itself over Zoom in order to keep functioning. Presented by Jeremy O. Harris, the play, streaming for free June 24-27, features an all-star cast consisting of Dylan Baker, Becky Ann Baker, Jessica Frances Dukes, Jason Butler Harner, Hal Linden, Jillian Mercado, Richard Kind, and Kara Wang. “Championing challenging, exciting new work during this pandemic has been my chief mission,” Harris (Slave Play, “Daddy”) said in a statement. “Torrey Townsend’s Off Broadway is a brilliant satire that dares to ask questions of a community that, though attempting, still has a long way to go. Knowing that arguably our country’s best satirist is directing the piece made this the most exciting piece to put my energy behind this year.”

O’Hara added, “Before the pandemic, Torrey and I had been developing his brilliant new satire examining the white supremacy that has been lurking behind the walls of the American theater. For months, I couldn’t get it out of my head, so I suggested that we do exactly what theater was doing during the pandemic — go digital — because, of course, the same systemic issues remain ‘off-line.’ I’m so excited to share this new work as we begin to reopen our theaters and hopefully prepare to come back in a more equitable and much less toxic manner.” Ari Fulton designed the costumes and props, with Teniece Divya Johnson as intimacy director, Twi McCallum as sound designer, and Leah Vicencio as technical director and video editor. I’m in for anything Harris is involved with, but with Linden and Kind in the cast, there’s even more reason not to miss this short-run show.

DRACULA / FRANKENSTEIN

Kate Hamill wrote and stars in gender-flipping Dracula at Classic Stage, playing Renfield (photo by Joan Marcus)

Classic Stage Company, Lynn F. Angelson Theater
136 East 13th St. between Third & Fourth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 15, $82-$127
classicstage.org

In 1971, Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein movie pit the Transylvanian count against the lab-created Creature, both introduced to film audiences in 1931 in separate horror films that started long-running franchises. The pair of ghouls, along with the Wolf Man, also appeared together in Charles Barton’s 1948 comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. And now Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster are not face-to-face but back-to-back in Classic Stage’s creepy double feature, new adaptations of each running in repertory through March 15.

Kate Hamill, whose previous literary adaptations include wonderfully imaginative versions of Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Vanity Fair, has had a helluva lotta fun with Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic horror novel. She calls it “a bit of a feminist revenge fantasy, really,” infusing it with a healthy dose of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a somewhat Marxist view of class struggle while keeping the plot firmly in the bloodline of the original.

Dracula (Matthew Amendt) is put in the background of this version; in fact, all the men are secondary to the women. Hamill’s great invention is gender-switching the characters, beginning with the mad Renfield (Hamill) and most spectacularly with the vampire hunter Van Helsing (Jessica Frances Dukes); the first is now a husband-murdering woman in a lunatic asylum, the second a powerful, leather-clad female punk cowboy (think Faith from Buffy and Angel). The plot proceeds mostly according to Stoker, with a few condensations and sly alterations: Renfield is cared for by the boringly plain Doctor George Seward (Matthew Saldivar), who’s engaged to the mischievous Lucy Westenra (Jamie Ann Romero), whose BFF is the pregnant Mina Harker (Kelley Curran). Mina’s husband, solicitor Jonathan Harker (Michael Crane), has gone to Transylvania on business. The conversation sounds contemporary from the outset, albeit couched in semi-Victorian diction as when Lucy teases Mina that Jonathan probably has “some Bavarian hausfrau. Some Slovakian slattern. Some Czech chippy” there. “I cannot blame him, Mina. You have gone rather to seed,” Lucy says, poking at Mina’s belly. “That’s the baby, you cow,” Mina responds. “Excuses, excuses,” Lucy says. Mina: “I’ll remind you how amusing that is when you are in the same condition.” Lucy: “One step at a time, please.” Mina: “It happens faster than you think. One day, you’re a schoolgirl, the next —” Lucy: “A hideous bloated old broodmare —” Mina: “— condemned to a life with no greater excitement than visiting a horrible little trollop on the seaside!”

Jonathan Harker (Michael Crane) has no idea what’s in store for him from Drusilla (Laura Baranik) and Marilla (Lori Laing) in new Dracula adaptation (photo by Joan Marcus)

Dracula is essentially a minor character, dressed in white instead of the traditional black (the costumes are by Robert Perdziola), not as demonic as he is often depicted; rather, his strength is frankly sexual and class-based. He is protected by two henchwomen, the lustful vampires Drusilla (Laura Baranik), named after a Buffy character, and Marilla (Lori Laing), perhaps named after the spinster from Anne of Green Gables. As Dracula slowly turns Mina into the walking dead, Dr. Seward refuses to believe in any such nefarious doings, and intrepid vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing arrives on the scene, ready to fight, quickly winning the formerly meek Mina to her side as they team up to rescue Jonathan and kill the count.

Directed by Sarna Lapine (Sunday in the Park with George, Little Women), this Dracula is a bit scattershot, all over the place as it investigates feminist themes from the Victorian era to today, as well as the emergence of working- and middle-class power versus the landed aristocracy. Renfield is a woman dealing with daddy issues, projecting her lust and religious zeal onto the unavailable Dracula, while the heroes are Mina, a twist on Buffy sweetly played by Curran (The Winter’s Tale, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore), and Dr. Van Helsing, portrayed with fearless panache by Dukes (By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Yellowman). Classic Stage artistic director John Doyle’s sparse set is often empty except for when beds are rolled onstage, keeping the focus on the characters themselves.

Hamill’s sense of humor shines through as she toys with genre conventions across two hours and twenty minutes with intermission. When Jonathan first meets the count upon arriving at Dracula’s deserted mansion, he says, “I was beginning to think there wasn’t a soul in the place!” This Dracula also is more aware of class warfare than usual, telling Jonathan, “If control is shifting to the masses, than I must be of the masses. I must not rule from the castle on the hill anymore. Instead, I must become a common man, anonymous; — welcomed everywhere, and remembered nowhere. A man — rather — like you.” It’s a battle of the sexes in which men, whether supernatural or human, don’t stand a chance.

Stephanie Berry and Rob Morrison star in Tristan Bernays’s Frankenstein at Classic Stage (photo by Joan Marcus)

Tristan Bernays is far more faithful to the original story in his stark adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s anonymously published 1818 epistolary novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. The streamlined production features two actors, Stephanie Berry as Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, and Rob Morrison singing songs, playing guitar, contributing sound effects, narrating sections, and moving around the furniture, which includes a long table, a large mirror, and several small pails. (This set also is designed by Doyle.) As with Hamill’s Dracula, Bernays’s Frankenstein plays with gender identity as it explores issues of God versus man as creator. Shortly after being brought to life, the Creature starts learning language and finding its place in the world, like a child quickly growing into adulthood. But the more it understands, the less it likes.

The Creature (Stephanie Berry) grows more and more curious in Classic Stage adaptation of Gothic novel (photo by Joan Marcus)

The narration is taken directly from the source material, with added dialogue. “What if — What if I failed to speak to him in gentle tongue? What if though blind he sensed withal my horrid shape? What if his children came back swift and ruined all my plans? What if — What if —” the Creature says as he enters the home where a blind man lives. Shortly after leaving the house, the Creature looks up at the stars and screams out, “Why? Why did you mould me but for misery? Am I to never feel a friendly touch? A kindly look? Love? Compassion? Why did you make me so? Why?” The Creature ultimately confronts Dr. Frankenstein, his wife, Elizabeth, and their son, William, and declares his need for a companion, leading to a tragic conclusion.

Even at a mere eighty minutes, the play, directed by Timothy Douglas (Radio Golf, Etiquette of Vigilance), drags on. The scenes don’t flow easily into one another, feeling ragged and disjointed. Berry (Gem of the Ocean, For All the Women Who Thought They Were Mad) has some fine moments as the Creature, but the story and pace can get confusing, while Morrison (Avenue Q, Nevermore), clearly an excellent musician, seems mostly unnecessary. It ends up being more of a curiosity, which is not enough to sustain it, whether seen as a Gothic tale or a contemporary parable.

BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK

Gloria Mitchell (Jenni Barber) holds court as maids Vera Stark (Jessica Frances Dukes) and Lottie McBride (Heather Alicia Simms) look on in Lynn Nottage revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through March 3, $35 after $60
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org
www.meetverastark.com

As the name of Lynn Nottage’s 2011 play suggests, the title character in By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is an afterthought, an aside. And indeed, as the rowdy and wild Signature revival, which opened tonight at the Irene Diamond Stage, reveals, Stark is central in the fictional world of the play but represents the sad legacy of Tinseltown racism from the Golden Age of Hollywood through to the present day. The story begins in 1933, when “America’s Sweetie Pie,” glamorous actress Gloria Mitchell (Jenni Barber), is rehearsing with her maid, Vera Stark (Jessica Frances Dukes), for the lead in the upcoming Hollywood film The Belle of New Orleans, about an octoroon prostitute and her maid, Tilly. While Gloria has trouble with her lines, Vera has a firm handle on the part of the maid; in fact, she wants to audition for the film too. When Vera returns to her tiny apartment — a far cry from Gloria’s absurdly ritzy, overdecorated home — she tells one of her roommates, Lottie McBride (Heather Alicia Simms), about the movie. “A Southern epic! Magnolias and petticoats. You know what else it means, cotton and slaves,” Vera says. “Slaves? With lines?” Lottie responds excitedly. They both decide that getting a job in the film is worth it no matter how demeaning or stereotypical the part might be.

Leroy (Warner Miller) attempts to charm Vera (Jessica Frances Dukes) in By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (photo by Joan Marcus)

Meanwhile, the third roommate, Anna Mae Simpkins (Carra Patterson), is passing as South American instead of black to date big-time director Maximillian Von Oster (Manoel Felciano). Later, outside the audition stage, Vera meets jazz and blues musician Leroy Barksdale (Warner Miller), who claims to be Von Oster’s Man Friday. When he hears that Vera is interested in playing Tilly, he belittles the role and she calls him a fool. “You find that funny, do ya?” he replies. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m up for a good laugh as much as the next fella, but why we still playing slaves. Shucks, it was hard enough getting free the first damn time.” Later, at a party, studio head Mr. Slavsick (David Turner) expresses his displeasure at hearing some of the details of the film, which he fears will violate the Hays Code, the industry’s morality guidelines that banned such elements as miscegenation, profanity, licentiousness, and white slavery. The second act moves ahead to 1973 and 2003 as we see the aftereffects of the events that occurred back in 1933, placing them in a contemporary context that questions just how much things have not changed in Hollywood and society at large.

Carra Patterson, Heather Alicia Simms, and Warner Miller change roles for second act of Lynn Nottage play at the Signature (photo by Joan Marcus)

Nottage’s second work in her Signature residency (following a fine revival of Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine), By the Way, Meet Vera Stark tackles such issues as slavery, class, and racism by indicting everyone involved in the system. Vera, Lottie, and Anna Mae are not left unscathed by their participation in Hollywood’s portrayal of blacks, willing to sacrifice a part of themselves in order to be successes, even though their options are few in depression-era America. “It tickles me how half the Negroes in this town are running around like chickens without heads, trying to get five minutes of shucking and jiving time, all so they can say they’re in the pictures. It’s just lights and shadows, what’s the big deal?” Leroy says to Vera, adding, “If you wanna be in pictures, where you gonna begin, and where are you gonna end?” Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nottage (Sweat, Ruined) has crafted clever caricatures of real Hollywood people, including Miriam Hopkins and Carole Lombard (Gloria), Hattie McDaniel and Ruby Dandridge (Lottie), Dolores del Rio and Carmen Miranda (Anna Mae), Adolph Zukor and Darryl Zanuck (Slavsick), Erich von Stroheim and King Vidor (Von Oster), and Theresa Harris and Nina Mae McKinney (Vera). Despite the slapstick, the characters are so believable that you might think that Vera Stark was a real actress; for its 2012 run at the Geffen Playhouse, a faux documentary was made, with Peter Bogdanovich discussing her impact on film and culture, fooling many people into thinking Vera actually existed.

Director Kamilah Forbes’s (Between the World and Me, Detroit ’67) production nails the screwball comedies of the 1930s in the first act and the world of celebrity in the second. Dede M. Ayite’s period costumes and Mia Neal’s on-target hair and wig design meld well with Clint Ramos’s sets, which range from Gloria’s posh pad to a 1973 talk show. Obie winner Dukes (Bootycandy, Yellowman) is a delight as Stark (originated by Sanaa Lathan at Second Stage in 2011), a woman who wants to push the boundaries while all too aware of its limitations. The rest of the solid cast takes on multiple roles, playing different parts in each act. Nottage (Mlima’s Tale, Intimate Apparel) makes her points, focusing on the little-known history of black actors in the early history of cinema, without getting heavy-handed; the play, which has been extended through March 10 at the Signature, is particularly relevant as the Oscars approach, a Hollywood awards show that only a few years ago was labeled #OscarsSoWhite.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: A BLANKET OF DUST

blanket of dust 2

Flea Theater Mainstage
20 Thomas St. between Broadway & Church St.
Monday – Saturday through June 30, premium tickets start at $67
866-811-4111
www.ablanketofdust.com
theflea.org

Richard Squires’s A Blanket of Dust, the political thriller opening June 12 at the Flea, begins on September 11, 2001, with Diana Crane on the phone with her husband, who is calling her from inside the North Tower as chaos mounts. After his death, she determinedly seeks justice but comes up against both the media and the government as she hunts for the truth. The world premiere, part of the Theater of Resistance, is directed by Christopher Murrah and produced by writer, actor, director, composer, and experimental gallerist Squires, whose previous works include Feathertop, The Fall of Albion, and the film Crazy Like a Fox. Angela Pierce stars as Diana, an Antigone-like figure who is the daughter of Sen. Walter Crane, played by Anthony Newfield, and the widow of 9/11 victim Sam Power. Alison Fraser is her mother, Vanessa, and James Patrick Nelson is her brother, Washington Post reporter Charlie Crane. Tommy Schrider plays bookstore owner Andrew Black, son of former CIA director Adam Black, who is portrayed by Brad Bellamy. The cast also features Brennan Caldwell, Joseph Dellger, Jessica Frances Dukes, Kelsey Rainwater, Peter J. Romano, and Peggy J. Scott.

The cast of A Blanket of Dust rehearses before opening at the Flea (photo by Jeffrey Wolfman)

TICKET GIVEAWAY: A Blanket of Dust runs through June 30 at the Flea, and twi-ny has two pairs of premium tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and favorite play or movie involving 9/11 and its aftermath to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, June 13, at 3:00 pm to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; two winners will be selected at random.