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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2019
THEATER: "For Colored Girls" Returns. Finally!
FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE/
WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF ** 1/2 out of ****
PUBLIC THEATER
Well, that's a relief! After decades of hearing about but never getting a
chance to actually see the play For Colored Girls: Who Have
Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow is Enuf, I assumed it must be
a dusty relic . It's not.
Playwright Ntozake Shange's work (last seen in a major NYC revival in
1995, apparently) is certainly of its time, the mid-1970s. But it's hardlydated. Shows devoted to women of color are still needed. Stories ofabuse and mistreatment and plain old indifference are still necessary.
And the simple brave acts of sharing those hungers and desires, of
admitting you fall and get back up, of finding strength in communityand sisterhood are still powerful.
Shange calls her combination of movement, dance, music and
poems/monologues a choreopoem. When first performing these
pieces, Shange simply couldn't stand still the way poets and authorswere politely expected to do. She just couldn't. She had to speak up, tospeak out, to get in motion . Sitting still was not an option. It still isn't.
Today, For Colored Girls doesn't shock with its structure and style,
though it would still be a refreshing presence on Broadway. Decades ofpoetry slams and spoken word, revues, works of theater built arounddance and text quilted into a whole, and a growing if still-too-smallbody of work by women and people of color all make
For Colored Girls
more familiar to audiences today. You can see where it came from andwhat it led to and, happily, you can judge it on its own terms as art,not just for its importance. On those terms, it's still vital if imperfect.MICHAEL GILTZ AT WORK
Michael Giltz is a freelance writer
based in NYC and can be reached atmgiltz@pipeline.com
FAVORITE LINKS
Americablog
Five O'Clock Lightning baseball blogDeep Pop -- Lori Lakin's Blog
The Back Page -- Jason Page on ESPN
Radio
Cine-Blog -- George Robinson's Blog
Documents On Art & Cinema - Daryl
Chin's Blog
Brucie G's Wondrous Blog Of
Adventure and Mystery -- Bruce
Greenspan's Blog
BLOG ARCHIVE
▼ 2019 (81)
► November (1)
▼ October (21)
For me, it plays like a revue. Seven women take the stage, each one in
a brightly colored dress and identified in the program as the Lady in
Blue, the Lady in Brown, the Lady In Orange and Red and so on.Disarmingly, they begin by echoing the chants and poems recited andremembered by little girls in playgrounds and streets for generations.Pretending to jump rope or skip or performing elaborate handmovements (or at least elaborate enough to bewilder any boys like me
watching from afar), the actresses cavort about the stage. Then the
action slides into more adult concerns with Shange effectivelydelivering her first and most important message: women find strengthand courage with each other from their earliest age and must never
give that up.
And they're off, with a monologue or poem gliding into a dance or song
and then back into another spoken word piece. The topics range fromlosing your virginity on the night of your high school graduation(finally!) to being harassed on the street to mocking men's endless
need to apologize to a childhood fascination with the hero Toussaint
Louverture to worrying you've made too much space for someone inyour life and crowded yourself out.
As with any revue, some pieces and performers land better than
others. For me, the moments that focused on the men and what they
did or didn't do were far less interesting than the ones that focusedinwardly on the women themselves. Turning the Lady in Purple into aperson with a hearing loss (played with expressive beauty byAlexandria Wailes) worked a treat. As the Lady in Blue, Sasha Allen of
The Voice let loose on the biggest vocal numbers. And in the Tony-
winning role of the Lady in Red, Jayme Lawson was a magnetic
presence. However, her big monologue about an abusive man has beendimmed by decades of seeing that story played out on cheap TV shows
and the like. Plus, real drama comes from how the Lady in Red would
deal with that pain, not the mere plot twist of what the man does. Still,her transition from a woman to a little girl begging daddy to be nice isbeautifully done and Lawson is definitely one to watch.
As the Lady in Brown, Celia Chevalier was the least compelling, butBOOKS: Don't Bother Trying To
"Find Me"
THEATER: "The Sound Inside"
Gets Muffled By Final...
THEATER: Stuff and Nonsense
for Friendly Crowds --...
THEATER: "Scotland, PA" or,
The Bloody King Of Bur...
THEATER: "For Colored Girls"
Returns. Finally!
The Movies, Books, Theater,
Concerts, CDs I've See...
BookFilter Reading List
TV and Film Must Watch List
THEATER: "Forbidden
Broadway" Is Back and
Broadway...
THEATER: "Soft Power" In
Hard Times
THEATER: "Dublin Carol" Hits
a Mournful But Hopefu...
THEATER: COLE PORTER
REVUE "DECLINE ANDFALL" IS T...
THEATER: "Terra Firma" Is On
Shaky Ground
THEATER: "The Glass
Menagerie" Sans Tricks OrTrea...
THEATER: Wrestling With
Faith in "Heroes Of The Fo...
THEATER: A Bright Future In
Reach For "Chasing Rai...
THEATER: The Not-So "Great
Society"
THEATER: BOO! A Halloween
Scare Fest Closes Its Ey...
THEATER: "A(loft) Modulation"
-- A Play With Jazz ...
THEATER: "Freestyle Love
Supreme" and "DerrenBrow...
BOOKS: A Fantasy Classic
Finally Translated Into E...
► September (10)
► August (9)
the collective group is strong enough to lift everyone's game up. Still,
this particular production has flaws. The staging by director Leah C.
Gardiner was a sort of in-the-round compromise. Most of the audience
is in traditional stadium seating facing the performance space. But
there is also a semi-circle of audience members on stage; it's likewatching people who are watching a show being performed in theround. And the performances certainly play to everyone. You feel theshow yearns to be done this way completely -- it's a communal
experience, after all -- but simply didn't have that as an option.
I also would love to see the musicians visible on stage, rather than
tucked away. (Not to get all John Doyle on you, but even the cast
might play instruments/percussion as well.) The scenic design of
Myung Hee Cho certainly did it no favors. A blurry, mirror-likereflective material encircles the stage and is effective. But clear plasticcrystals hanging from the ceiling give the room a chintzy '70s vibe.And revealing about a half dozen disco balls at the finale felt desultory.(They lowered about a foot from the ceiling in underwhelming
fashion.) Further, I am allergic to finger snapping as a sign of approval
or applause. Even done ironically, it makes me want to flee for the exit.That's one dated element that could be easily lost -- and replaced bythe more physical and inspiring raising of hands a-flutter, as one doesin appreciation of deaf performers, which appropriately makes anappearance here.
None of that detracted from the exuberance of a cast performing the
show the night I caught it, on the anniversary of Shange's birthOctober 18, 1948. We missed her being in attendance by just one year,
since she died on October 27, 2018. Which leads me back to the
original mystery. To be blunt, For Colored Girls is a very inexpensive
work to put on. It made history by running on Broadway for 742performances, far longer than A Raisin In The Sun, to make one
obvious comparison. So what took them so long to bring it back?
Despite my cavils about this particular production, I'm delighted tosay, it's not because of the play itself. For Colored Girls still has
something to say and it always will.
THEATER OF 2019
Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2► July (7)
► June (3)
► May (6)
► April (10)
► March (5)
► February (1)
► January (8)
► 2018 (38)
► 2017 (6)
► 2016 (2)
► 2015 (29)
► 2014 (2)
► 2013 (5)
► 2012 (17)
► 2011 (15)
► 2010 (10)
► 2009 (43)
► 2008 (86)
► 2007 (781)
► 2006 (2412)
► 2005 (5)
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **
Estado Vegetal ***
Hans Christian Andersen * 1/2
Cirque du Soleil: Luzia ***
BLKS ** 1/2
Moulin Rouge ** 1/2
Bat Out Of Hell **
Unchilding **
Sea Wall/ A Life ** 1/2
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ***
Betrayal *** 1/2
Fifty Million Frenchmen ** 1/2
Freestyle Love Supreme ** 1/2
Derren Brown: Secret ***
(A)loft Modulation * 1/2
The Great Society **
I Can't See *
Heroes Of The Fourth Turning ** 1/2
Chasing Rainbows: The Road To Oz ***
The Glass Menagerie (dir Austin Pendleton & Peter Bloch) **
Terra Firma (debut of The Coop theater company) **
Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation ***
Dublin Carol ** 1/2
Soft Power **
The Decline and Fall of The Entire World As Seen Through The Eyes
Of Cole Porter ***
For Colored Girls ** 1/2
Scotland, PA
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book
lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the
way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new
releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal
recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz
Sandbox , a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on
entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as
guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website.
Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called
Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
POSTED BY MICHAEL GILTZ AT 10:00 PM
NO COMMENTS:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)Newer Post Older Post Home
Create Blog Sign In
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2019
THEATER: "For Colored Girls" Returns. Finally!
FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE/
WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF ** 1/2 out of ****
PUBLIC THEATER
Well, that's a relief! After decades of hearing about but never getting a
chance to actually see the play For Colored Girls: Who Have
Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow is Enuf, I assumed it must be
a dusty relic . It's not.
Playwright Ntozake Shange's work (last seen in a major NYC revival in
1995, apparently) is certainly of its time, the mid-1970s. But it's hardlydated. Shows devoted to women of color are still needed. Stories ofabuse and mistreatment and plain old indifference are still necessary.
And the simple brave acts of sharing those hungers and desires, of
admitting you fall and get back up, of finding strength in communityand sisterhood are still powerful.
Shange calls her combination of movement, dance, music and
poems/monologues a choreopoem. When first performing these
pieces, Shange simply couldn't stand still the way poets and authorswere politely expected to do. She just couldn't. She had to speak up, tospeak out, to get in motion . Sitting still was not an option. It still isn't.
Today, For Colored Girls doesn't shock with its structure and style,
though it would still be a refreshing presence on Broadway. Decades ofpoetry slams and spoken word, revues, works of theater built arounddance and text quilted into a whole, and a growing if still-too-smallbody of work by women and people of color all make
For Colored Girls
more familiar to audiences today. You can see where it came from andwhat it led to and, happily, you can judge it on its own terms as art,not just for its importance. On those terms, it's still vital if imperfect.MICHAEL GILTZ AT WORK
Michael Giltz is a freelance writer
based in NYC and can be reached atmgiltz@pipeline.com
FAVORITE LINKS
Americablog
Five O'Clock Lightning baseball blogDeep Pop -- Lori Lakin's Blog
The Back Page -- Jason Page on ESPN
Radio
Cine-Blog -- George Robinson's Blog
Documents On Art & Cinema - Daryl
Chin's Blog
Brucie G's Wondrous Blog Of
Adventure and Mystery -- Bruce
Greenspan's Blog
BLOG ARCHIVE
▼ 2019 (81)
► November (1)
▼ October (21)
For me, it plays like a revue. Seven women take the stage, each one in
a brightly colored dress and identified in the program as the Lady in
Blue, the Lady in Brown, the Lady In Orange and Red and so on.Disarmingly, they begin by echoing the chants and poems recited andremembered by little girls in playgrounds and streets for generations.Pretending to jump rope or skip or performing elaborate handmovements (or at least elaborate enough to bewilder any boys like me
watching from afar), the actresses cavort about the stage. Then the
action slides into more adult concerns with Shange effectivelydelivering her first and most important message: women find strengthand courage with each other from their earliest age and must never
give that up.
And they're off, with a monologue or poem gliding into a dance or song
and then back into another spoken word piece. The topics range fromlosing your virginity on the night of your high school graduation(finally!) to being harassed on the street to mocking men's endless
need to apologize to a childhood fascination with the hero Toussaint
Louverture to worrying you've made too much space for someone inyour life and crowded yourself out.
As with any revue, some pieces and performers land better than
others. For me, the moments that focused on the men and what they
did or didn't do were far less interesting than the ones that focusedinwardly on the women themselves. Turning the Lady in Purple into aperson with a hearing loss (played with expressive beauty byAlexandria Wailes) worked a treat. As the Lady in Blue, Sasha Allen of
The Voice let loose on the biggest vocal numbers. And in the Tony-
winning role of the Lady in Red, Jayme Lawson was a magnetic
presence. However, her big monologue about an abusive man has beendimmed by decades of seeing that story played out on cheap TV shows
and the like. Plus, real drama comes from how the Lady in Red would
deal with that pain, not the mere plot twist of what the man does. Still,her transition from a woman to a little girl begging daddy to be nice isbeautifully done and Lawson is definitely one to watch.
As the Lady in Brown, Celia Chevalier was the least compelling, butBOOKS: Don't Bother Trying To
"Find Me"
THEATER: "The Sound Inside"
Gets Muffled By Final...
THEATER: Stuff and Nonsense
for Friendly Crowds --...
THEATER: "Scotland, PA" or,
The Bloody King Of Bur...
THEATER: "For Colored Girls"
Returns. Finally!
The Movies, Books, Theater,
Concerts, CDs I've See...
BookFilter Reading List
TV and Film Must Watch List
THEATER: "Forbidden
Broadway" Is Back and
Broadway...
THEATER: "Soft Power" In
Hard Times
THEATER: "Dublin Carol" Hits
a Mournful But Hopefu...
THEATER: COLE PORTER
REVUE "DECLINE ANDFALL" IS T...
THEATER: "Terra Firma" Is On
Shaky Ground
THEATER: "The Glass
Menagerie" Sans Tricks OrTrea...
THEATER: Wrestling With
Faith in "Heroes Of The Fo...
THEATER: A Bright Future In
Reach For "Chasing Rai...
THEATER: The Not-So "Great
Society"
THEATER: BOO! A Halloween
Scare Fest Closes Its Ey...
THEATER: "A(loft) Modulation"
-- A Play With Jazz ...
THEATER: "Freestyle Love
Supreme" and "DerrenBrow...
BOOKS: A Fantasy Classic
Finally Translated Into E...
► September (10)
► August (9)
the collective group is strong enough to lift everyone's game up. Still,
this particular production has flaws. The staging by director Leah C.
Gardiner was a sort of in-the-round compromise. Most of the audience
is in traditional stadium seating facing the performance space. But
there is also a semi-circle of audience members on stage; it's likewatching people who are watching a show being performed in theround. And the performances certainly play to everyone. You feel theshow yearns to be done this way completely -- it's a communal
experience, after all -- but simply didn't have that as an option.
I also would love to see the musicians visible on stage, rather than
tucked away. (Not to get all John Doyle on you, but even the cast
might play instruments/percussion as well.) The scenic design of
Myung Hee Cho certainly did it no favors. A blurry, mirror-likereflective material encircles the stage and is effective. But clear plasticcrystals hanging from the ceiling give the room a chintzy '70s vibe.And revealing about a half dozen disco balls at the finale felt desultory.(They lowered about a foot from the ceiling in underwhelming
fashion.) Further, I am allergic to finger snapping as a sign of approval
or applause. Even done ironically, it makes me want to flee for the exit.That's one dated element that could be easily lost -- and replaced bythe more physical and inspiring raising of hands a-flutter, as one doesin appreciation of deaf performers, which appropriately makes anappearance here.
None of that detracted from the exuberance of a cast performing the
show the night I caught it, on the anniversary of Shange's birthOctober 18, 1948. We missed her being in attendance by just one year,
since she died on October 27, 2018. Which leads me back to the
original mystery. To be blunt, For Colored Girls is a very inexpensive
work to put on. It made history by running on Broadway for 742performances, far longer than A Raisin In The Sun, to make one
obvious comparison. So what took them so long to bring it back?
Despite my cavils about this particular production, I'm delighted tosay, it's not because of the play itself. For Colored Girls still has
something to say and it always will.
THEATER OF 2019
Frankenstein: Under The Radar Fest at the Public ** 1/2
Minor Character: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ***
Ink: Under The Radar Festival at the Public ** 1/2
Choir Boy ** 1/2
White Noise ** 1/2
Kiss Me, Kate ***
Ain't No Mo' *** 1/2
Ain't Too Proud **
The Cradle Will Rock * 1/2
Mrs. Murray's Menagerie *** 1/2
Oklahoma! (on Broadway) ** 1/2► July (7)
► June (3)
► May (6)
► April (10)
► March (5)
► February (1)
► January (8)
► 2018 (38)
► 2017 (6)
► 2016 (2)
► 2015 (29)
► 2014 (2)
► 2013 (5)
► 2012 (17)
► 2011 (15)
► 2010 (10)
► 2009 (43)
► 2008 (86)
► 2007 (781)
► 2006 (2412)
► 2005 (5)
Socrates **
The Pain Of My Belligerence *
Burn This **
Hadestown *** 1/2
All My Sons * 1/2
Tootsie ** 1/2
Ink ***
Beetlejuice **
Estado Vegetal ***
Hans Christian Andersen * 1/2
Cirque du Soleil: Luzia ***
BLKS ** 1/2
Moulin Rouge ** 1/2
Bat Out Of Hell **
Unchilding **
Sea Wall/ A Life ** 1/2
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child ***
Betrayal *** 1/2
Fifty Million Frenchmen ** 1/2
Freestyle Love Supreme ** 1/2
Derren Brown: Secret ***
(A)loft Modulation * 1/2
The Great Society **
I Can't See *
Heroes Of The Fourth Turning ** 1/2
Chasing Rainbows: The Road To Oz ***
The Glass Menagerie (dir Austin Pendleton & Peter Bloch) **
Terra Firma (debut of The Coop theater company) **
Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation ***
Dublin Carol ** 1/2
Soft Power **
The Decline and Fall of The Entire World As Seen Through The Eyes
Of Cole Porter ***
For Colored Girls ** 1/2
Scotland, PA
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book
lover’s best friend. It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the
way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new
releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal
recommendations every step of the way. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz
Sandbox , a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on
entertainment news of the day with top journalists and opinion makers as
guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website.
Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called
Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
POSTED BY MICHAEL GILTZ AT 10:00 PM
NO COMMENTS:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)Newer Post Older Post Home