Tag Archives: Latoya Edwards

WHITE GIRL IN DANGER

Keesha (Latoya Edwards) teams up with Megan White (Molly Hager), Maegan Whitehall (Alyse Alan Louis), and Meagan Whitehead (Lauren Marcus) in White Girl in Danger (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

WHITE GIRL IN DANGER
2econd Stage Theater
Tony Kiser Theater
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 21, $46-$86
www.2st.com
vineyardtheatre.org

Near the end of Michael R. Jackson’s bewildering White Girl in Danger, the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize–winning hit A Strange Loop, a surprise character previously heard in voiceover but not seen appears as a kind of explanatory deus ex machina.

“I know. It’s very confusing, so why don’t you two have a seat and allow me to reintroduce myself,” the character tells Keesha Gibbs and her mother, Nell. Unfortunately, his stirring monologue comes too late to rescue the nearly three-hour musical, a baffling tale coproduced by Second Stage and the Vineyard and in desperate need of a dramaturg and an editor with sharp scissors. It’s as if the companies were so thrilled to have Jackson on their roster that they let him do whatever he wanted, with no one saying, hey, wait a minute. . . .

White Girl in Danger takes place in the land of Allwhite, referred to in the opening song as “a world of intrigue and mystery / a world of endless story / a world where there’s no singular destiny / So as the world turns around, we see / protagonists of all variety / they’re characters on White Girl in Danger / a soap opera on your TV / And all of them are Allwhite.” Jackson was inspired to write the show because of his love of soap operas and Lifetime movies; there are references to General Hospital, The Guiding Light, The Bold and the Beautiful, As the World Turns, and other favorites scattered throughout, most likely lost on the younger audience members who embraced A Strange Loop.

Among the denizens of Allwhite are the trio of Megan White (Molly Hager), Maegan Whitehall (Alyse Alan Louis), and Meagan Whitehead (Lauren Marcus), whose first names are pronounced differently and who together represent problems often associated with troubled white suburban teens (anorexia, drugs, daddy issues, self-harm); their boyfriends Matthew S, Scott M, and Zack Paul Gosselar (all played by Eric William Morris, the last a reference to Mark-Paul Gosselar, who starred as Zack in the sitcom Saved by the Bell), a cutie, a toughie, and a sex-obsessed psycho; and the girls’ mothers, Diane Whitehead, Barbara Whitehall, and Judith White, (Liz Lark Brown), who range from trashy to flashy to overprotective.

Nell (Tarra Conner Jones) changes jobs throughout Michael R. Jackson’s second musical (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

“Danger! Danger! Danger! Danger!” the “Blackground” voices proclaim, not quite like the robot from Lost in Space. Blackground characters exist only in the background as part of minor, stereotypical plot points. Here they include the trio of Florence (Kayla Davion), Abilene (Jennifer Fouché), and Caroline (Morgan Siobhan Green, but I saw Ciara Alyse Harris), a Greek chorus girl group; Tarik Blackwell (Vincent Jamal Hooper), who continually gets shot by the police; and Clarence (James Jackson Jr.), the high school janitor with Magic Negro potential. Meanwhile, there is a serial killer on the loose, disposing of white women.

The central figure is Keesha, a Blackground player who is “tired of the way the Allwhite Writer treats us. It’s like we’re second-class characters.” In a meta twist, Keesha is usually played by Latoya Edwards, but her understudy, Alexis Cofield, has stepped in often; several colleagues and I saw Cofield in the role, and one was at a performance in which Cofield replaced Edwards after intermission, which only added to the turmoil already occurring onstage.

When Molly Goodwhite — who “had the most racist attitude!,” according to Nell (Tarra Conner Jones) — is found dead, Keesha is promoted to the Allwhite role of Best Friend, much to her mother’s chagrin. “You have to resist this story!” Nell, a maid, lunch lady, nurse, and assistant district attorney, insists. But Keesha, who believes she has Blackground Girl magic, is determined to keep climbing the social ladder, explaining, “Who knows? Maybe I can be the first Blackground to get her own Allwhite story.”

I can hear you saying, “Hey, wait a minute. Above, didn’t you call the show ‘bewildering’ and ‘baffling’?” Yes, it’s all that and worse, hopelessly convoluted, but I pieced together the details of the characters and plot from poring over the script after the fact; sitting in the audience, I was flabbergasted at how hard it was to follow.

James Jackson Jr. saves the best for last in White Girl in Danger (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

It’s impossible to tell when the actors are portraying characters in Jackson’s White Girl in Danger and when they are characters in the soap-within-the-play, or if that’s the case at all. Fake promotional teasers and ads projected on a back screen prior to the show and during intermission (by Josh Higgason) are hard to hear (and most people don’t pay attention to them anyway). Projections during the show make it difficult to know where to look.

In the script, Jackson writes that Allwhite is “contradictorily a physical place, personal and national/global identity, and a point of view,” which makes it too perplexing for director Lileana Blain-Cruz to navigate through; she previously has successfully helmed such labyrinthine works as Fefu and Her Friends at TFANA, Anatomy of a Suicide at the Atlantic, and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA the Negro Book of the Dead at the Signature but also, less successfully, the oversized The Skin of Our Teeth at Lincoln Center.

Raja Feather Kelly’s choreography, so distinct in A Strange Loop and such other shows as On Sugarland and We’re Gonna Die, gets lost in all the constant mayhem, along with Meg Zervoulis’s music direction. The score is performed by an unseen seven-piece band, with lighting by Jen Schriever that creates ominous shadows and sound by Jonathan Deans. Adam Rigg’s set is a whirlwind of color, as are Montana Levi Blanco’s costumes.

Early on, Nell tells Keesha, “It’s not for us to question the Allwhite Writer.” Keesha responds, “Well, I do question him. . . . We’re citizens of Allwhite too! So why do we always have to suffer and die? Why can’t we ever get a moment of truth like the Allwhites do?” Caroline answers, “Aw, Keesha! Our lives of nonstop pain and sorrow ain’t so bad! And without Police Violence Story Time, we wouldn’t matter at all!”

Michael R. Jackson, who will be performing “MichaelMakeYouFeelGood” August 21 and 22 at Lincoln Center’s “Restart Stages: Summersongs” free festival, has a lot to say about systemic racial injustice in White Girl in Danger, but the show is overloaded in every aspect. Jones does bring the house down with a near-showstopping number that begins, “There’s a void here inside me / It’s a void that I’ve longed to fill.” There’s a good musical somewhere in here, if someone is willing to dig deep.

In soap operas, you can watch one episode, then not tune in again for months, and it could be the same scene still going on. Time does not work the same way onstage, where there’s no room for excess and creators have to make their points quickly and succinctly. There’s a quality musical somewhere in White Girl in Danger, but it will take a lot more work to find it.

DON’T STAY SAFE

Nygel D. Robinson, Iris Beaumier, and Latoya Edwards star in Prospect Theater Company’s Don’t Stay Safe (photos by Lesley Steele)

Who: Prospect Theater Company
What: Final film in Vision series
Where: Prospect Theater Company YouTube channel
When: Wednesday, December 30, free, 7:00
Why: Prospect Theater Company concludes its Vision series, consisting of new musical theater pieces on film, with Don’t Stay Safe, a short work with book and lyrics by Cheryl L. Davis and music by Douglas J. Cohen, featuring Iris Beaumier, Latoya Edwards, and Nygel D. Robinson. A companion to Davis and Cohen’s full-length 2016 musical Bridges, about a multiracial family fighting for racial equality and LGBTQ rights from 1965 to 2008, Don’t Stay Safe follows three people as they deal with similar issues in 2020, when the world changed. The December 30 premiere of the fifteen-minute film, which was directed by Christina Franklin at the West End Theatre, with music direction by John Bronston and cinematography by Lesley Steele, will be followed by a live Q&A with members of the cast and crew.

THE ROLLING STONE

The Rolling Stone explores the horrific treatment of homosexuals in Uganda (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 25, $92
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

“No news is good news,” Joe (James Udom) says near the beginning of Chris Urch’s wrenching drama The Rolling Stone, which continues at the Mitzi E. Newhouse through August 25. The play is named after a short-lived paper in Kampala, Uganda, which in 2010 outed LGBTQ people, identifying them so that they would then be arrested, beaten, and/or murdered. A gutsy James Udom is Joe, a priest waiting to hear if he will be named pastor of his local church, which is filled with gossipers; he lives with his younger siblings, Dembe (Ato Blankson-Wood) and Wummie (Latoya Edwards), who are both preparing for admission exams that will allow them to attend medical school in London. In the wake of their father’s recent death, leaving them orphans, all three must make sacrifices. Joe gets the job, but he is beholden to church leader Mama (Myra Lucretia Taylor), who has her own agenda. Dembe, who has been expected to marry Mama’s daughter, Naome (Adenike Thomas) — who mysteriously hasn’t uttered a sound in six months — is hiding his relationship with Sam (Robert Gilbert), a doctor whose father is Irish and mother Ugandan. And Wummie is forced to work as a cleaning woman when it turns out their father did not leave behind the money they thought and Joe, who is fiercely antigay, decides that only Dembe can go to London. But as news and gossip spread about the gay outings, the siblings clash with one another as well as the church.

Naome (Adenike Thomas) and Dembe (Ato Blankson-Wood) hope for a brighter future in The Rolling Stone at Lincoln Center (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The horrific treatment of the LGBTQ community in Uganda has been well documented, in such films as Call Me Kuchu and the recent uproar over a fundraising campaign to open the country’s first LGBTQ center, which has been denounced by the government. The Rolling Stone focuses on the relationship between Dembe and Sam, which is problematic in that Blankson-Wood and Gilbert lack the chemistry necessary to lift the drama. The play works much better when director Saheem Ali (Fireflies, Nollywood Dreams) turns his attention on the siblings, especially once Wummie discovers Dembe’s secret, which she knows would turn Joe violently against him. Meanwhile, Naome’s silence is representative of the terror and hypocrisy experienced by Ugandans every day. Arnulfo Maldonado’s set consists of a wavy, weblike curtain in the back and a rectangular gray block that rises from below the stage to serve alternately as a rowboat, a bed, and a bench. “I hear two arrests have already been made,” Mama says, referring to another outing in the newspaper. “Not that I say anything. It’s not my place to say. I just humbly hope and pray. Pray for every living soul need prayer now.” But in a society where people are expected to turn in their brothers and sons, praying that homosexuals be harshly dealt with, there is little hope until systemic changes are made.

SIGNIFICANT OTHER BY JOSHUA HARMON: A STAGED READING

Tony nominee Ethan Slater will perform the key role of Jordan in staged benefit reading of Significant Other at the JCC (photo by Joan Marcus)

Arts + Ideas
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at West 76th St.
Thursday, January 31, $25, 7:00
646-505-5708
jccmanhattan.org

I had the privilege of seeing Joshua Harmon’s wonderful Significant Other both off Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre in 2015 as well as on Broadway at the Booth in 2017, completely falling for this tale of four friends searching for love in New York City and beyond. The Roundabout production had an undeserved short run on Broadway, but it’s being brought back for a special one-night-only staged reading on January 31 at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, benefiting the institution’s “Out at the J” LGBTQIA programming. SpongeBob SquarePants himself, Tony nominee Ethan Slater, will play Jordan, with Midori Francis as Laura, Latoya Edwards as Vanessa, Cathryn Wake as Kiki, Kathryn Kates as Helene, and Isaac Powell as Zach, Evan, and Roger. (The casting of the actor who will play Will, Conrad, and Tony is TBD.) Rising star Harmon has also written Skintight, Admissions, and Bad Jews, so his career is off to a rousing start. Tickets for the Arts + Ideas event, which is directed by Daniella Caggiano and produced by Rachel Kunstadt, are only twenty-five dollars and go to a great cause, so you can’t go wrong with this special evening, part of the JCC’s Arts + Ideas initiative.

ENCORE ENGAGEMENT: SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY

MCC’s School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play is back for an encore run at the Lucille Lortel (photo by Joan Marcus)

MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St. between Bleecker & Hudson Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 9, $49-$115
212-352-3101
mcctheater.org

Following its initial run last fall, MCC’s School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play, which earned a Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble, is back at the Lucille Lortel Theatre for an encore engagement running through December 9. Below is an update of twi-ny’s original review from November 2017, with the new dates and actors added.

Actress Jocelyn Bioh’s professional playwriting debut is a sharp, uproarious tale of a clique of young boarding school students in central Ghana who can be as nasty as they wanna be, able to go toe-to-toe with Cady, Regina, Gretchen, Janis, and Karen from Mark Waters’s 2004 hit movie, Mean Girls. Bioh, who has appeared in such plays as Suzan-Lori Parks’s In the Blood, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Everybody and An Octoroon, and Jaclyn Backhaus’s Men on Boats, even references the film, which was written by Tina Fey (and the musical adaptation of which has been extended on Broadway through July 7), in the title of her show, School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play, which is back for an encore engagement at the Lucille Lortel through December 9. It’s 1986, and the students at Aburi Girls Boarding School are getting ready to audition for the Miss Ghana beauty pageant. Paulina Sarpong (MaameYaa Boafo) is the egotistical, narcissistic leader of a group of girls, willing to say or do just about anything to remain in charge. She brags about her soccer-playing boyfriend and how she is a shoo-in to be named Miss Ghana while brazenly putting down the rest of her crew, which consists of the tall, bright Ama (originally Níkẹ Kadri, now Latoya Edwards), the innocent, overweight Nana (Abena Mensah-Bonsu), and the twinlike duo of Gifty (Paige Gilbert) and Mercy (Mirirai Sithole). The power dynamic immediately shifts when headmistress Francis (Myra Lucretia Taylor) introduces a new student, Ericka Boafo (previously Nabiyah Be, now Joanna A. Jones), a beautiful, talented, and bold young woman who quickly challenges Paulina’s authority. Of course, putting Paulina on the defensive is not something you want to do, unless you’re ready for the barrage that will follow. So when Miss Ghana 1966, Eloise Amponsah (originated by Zainab Jah, now Zenzi Williams), whom Francis knows all too well, arrives to select one of the girls to compete in the pageant, the gloves are off and sides are chosen in a no-holds-barred battle for supremacy. “Headmistress likes to make everyone feel like they have a fair chance,” Paulina declares, “but we all know I’m the best.”

School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play was inspired by the true story of Yayra Erica Nego, the 2009 Miss Minnesota who went on to be named Miss Ghana 2011, a controversial decision for several reasons, including her fair skin, as well as by Rosalind Wiseman’s nonfiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes. In the seventy-five-minute play, Bioh, a first-generation Ghanaian American who went to boarding school in Hershey, Pennsylvania, explores such issues as body image and colorism, beauty and friendship, and race and class in this microcosmic Lord of the Flies scenario. Arnulfo Maldonado’s scenic design is simple but effective, a few tables in the school cafeteria, while Dede M. Ayite’s costumes change from the standard green-and-white school uniform to fancy dresses for the competition, giving each character a moment to shine. Tony-winning director Rebecca Taichman (Indecent, Familiar) keeps it all in check, never letting things get out of hand or become too clichéd. School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play is no mere African American version of Mean Girls; instead, it is as smart and entertaining, as sweet and honest, its characters as obnoxious and horrible and lovable and vulnerable, as teen girls themselves. The encore engagement will feature a series of special postshow events, including audience conversations on November 14 and 18 and a talkback on November 19.

MISS YOU LIKE HELL

Olivia (Gizel Jiménez) and Beatriz (Daphne Rubin-Vega) head out on the road in Miss You Like Hell (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Public Theater, Newman Theater
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 13, $90
212-967-7555
www.publictheater.org

Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes tackles immigration, marijuana reform, same-sex marriage, suicide, teen sex, the blogosphere, and more in the overstuffed, underwhelming road-trip musical Miss You Like Hell, which has been extended at the Public’s Newman Theater through May 13. Daphne Rubin-Vega stars as Beatriz, a Mexican immigrant living in California who, facing a critical immigration hearing, suddenly shows up to see her sixteen-year-old daughter, Olivia (Gizel Jiménez), who lives in Philadelphia with her father. Mother and daughter have not communicated for four years; they are so estranged that Olivia calls her Beatriz, not Mom. “I miss you like hell; my bones hurt, Olivia, because you’re not at my side,” Beatriz pleads to her daughter, who at first wants nothing to do with her. Beatriz ask Olivia to drive cross-country with her to the West Coast, but Olivia is dubious of her mother’s motives. “This is weird, Beatriz,” she says. “Come after school. We’ll grab slices and get caught up.” Her mother wants more, explaining how she reads Olivia’s anonymous, very personal blog — in which she claims her mother is dead — and is concerned for her, desperate for the two of them to hit the road together. “I’m a motherless girl / I survive on my own / It’s who I am / right down to the bone,” Olivia sings. “She’s my negative space / She’s my hole in the world / The echoing empty of a motherless girl.” Olivia eventually jumps into her mother’s truck and off they go on a journey that, just as Olivia expected, is a lot more than just a mother-daughter re-bonding experience.

Miss You Like Hell features an ensemble cast at the Public Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

Jiménez (Party People, Unseamly) sings her heart out as Olivia, while two-time Tony nominee Rubin-Vega (Rent, Anna in the Tropics) is more reserved and laid back as Beatriz. The other eight members of the cast sit on green chairs in the back and occasionally come onstage to change the props and play minor roles. Riccardo Hernandez’s stage features two rows of audience members seating on either side; in between is a blue floor populated by depictions of white doves, which also fly up the walls. Most of the sets consist of tables and chairs, with a revolving center that director Lear deBessonet (Venus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) doesn’t quite know what to do with, although Danny Mefford’s (Fun Home, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) choreography has a certain charm to it. In her theatrical debut, singer-songwriter Erin McKeown’s pop score, though not particularly memorable, has a sweet innocence, and the lyrics, by McKeown and Hudes (Water by the Spoonful, In the Heights), are, for the most part, fine (best verse, sung by Beatriz: “Be with me, ancestors / Be with me, witchy witches / I call upon the feminine divine / Yo, back me up, bitches”). But Hudes’s book is disappointing. When the story strays from the relationship between mother and daughter, the play stalls; the subplots are unnecessary diversions that take away from the main narrative. David Patrick Kelly and Michael Mulheren are terrific as Higgins and Mo, a couple of gay biker dudes who are getting married in every state they can, but Hudes gives them far too much time onstage. Olivia’s desire to go to Yellowstone to meet one of the fans of her blog, Pearl (Latoya Edwards), feels forced. And the less said about the tamale episode with Manuel (Danny Bolero) the better. (In addition, Marinda Anderson plays Beatriz’s lawyer, Marcus Paul James is a police officer, and Shawna M. Hamic is a legal clerk.) Miss You Like Hell is certainly timely and can be poignant, particularly as the country debates immigration and the president wants to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, but this road trip takes too many detours before reaching its unexpected destination.