On the Aisle

No Child Gives Revealing Lessons
If you want to see an indictment of the New York City public school system that is truthful, but also amusing, then you need to make your way to the Barrow Street Theatre to see Nilaja Sun in her one-woman show No Child. This is one of those plays that makes you take notice from the beginning to the end. Sun took her many years as a teaching artist going into over 20 schools in the New York City public school system and grabbed characters she encountered and created this play for several reasons. There are characters that she is honoring like the school janitors—the people that are least acknowledged but see everything going on in the school and can explain the school’s history, the timid teachers who are way in over their heads, and the poorly performing students that are used to adults counting them out.
 

As you watch this play you get to know these characters vividly. If you are a teacher you will definitely identify with the faculty characters and the students. As I sat in the audience, I could figure out who was a teacher sitting behind me because there were certain moments that they obviously recognized and reacted to.

Sun’s piece is educational, revealing, powerful  and funny. But it will only be around until August 14, so you’ll want to make arrangements to see it. While there is profanity in the show, it can be viewed by younger children, 10 and up.

 New Professional Theatre Company
Is Taking Harlem By Storm
New Haarlem Arts Theatre Company beautifully partners student actors from CCNY’s Theatre department with professional actors and is currently presenting a delightful performance of It Ain’t Nothin’ But The Blues at Aaron Davis Hall through August 21. This is a new professional theatre company in Harlem that was created by Eugene Nesmith, the founder, artistic director and chair of CCNY’s Theatre department.
Nesmith’s goal to pair these actors is a noble one and if the show I saw is evidence of its success, than it will be nothing but blues skies for New Haarlem Arts Theatre Company. It Ain’t Nothin’ But The Blues is an incredible production. This show lets the audience experience thrilling singing performances of gospel, country, jazz and blues music, while hearing a live band and there’s the added benefit of seeing some incredibly choreographed dance moves. This show has something for everyone and it’s something the entire family can enjoy.  The way the student actors perform next to the established thespians is truly a joy to behold. Everyone steps up to the bar and holds their own. This cast will have you taping, clapping and cheering and consists of Tatiana Adams, Darilyn Castillo, Shawn Brown, Nathaly Lopez, Marvel Allen, Dameka Hayes, Gerald Latham and Jeff Bolding. This show has the brilliant creative team of Tracy Jack as the choreographer and Alfred Preisser as the director.

 Bessie Smith’s Life Is Candidly
On Stage At St. Luke’s Theatre
I don’t know if you know a lot about the life of blues singer Bessie Smith. You may know that she was called the Empress of the Blues, and that she lived in the 1920s, but did you know that she was an alcoholic, smoked marijuana and partied with the best of them? She was a woman who didn’t seem to understand the meaning of excess. Well, before I saw The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues Of Bessie Smith at the St. Luke’s Theatre on W. 46th Street, the only information I had on Ms. Smith was that she was a blues singer.

After the show I was equipped with a great deal of information about this very successful artist. Smith was the daughter of a preacher, she had many siblings and she was poor growing up. It could be that the poverty that she knew was one of the reasons she did things to extremes. What you learn during this play is that Smith sang the blues because she  literally lived them. She had bad relationships, death took her first husband away, she got involved with a man who called himself managing her career but also felt he had a right to judge the way she lived her life. He felt that she should calm things down, meanwhile, he would leave for weeks on end and have affairs.

Although she had marvelous talents, as does Miche Braden who belts out Smith songs with a smooth, lusty flavor, Smith also had heartaches in huge doses. This revealing play is written by Angelo Parra and directed by Joe Brancato, who is also responsible for the concept and musical staging. Parra has Smith tell her own story as she and band members hang out and sing at an after-hours club. Her band members are perfectly played by Jim Hankins, Aaron Graves and Keith Loftis and Anthony E. Nelson, Jr. The last two alternate in the role of the saxophone player. The show is playing an open-ended run.

On the Aisle

B. Smith in “Love, Loss and What I Wore”

B. Smith, yes the restaurant owner of the soul food restaurant in Manhattan’s Theater District is in a play, Love, Loss and What I Wore, at the Westside Theatre on W. 43rd St. This play, written by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, is a collection of women’s stories associated with different clothing items and it is a wonderful experience. Based on a book by Ilene Beckerman, there are humorous parts and parts that will touch your soul. Smith is making her off-Broadway debut in this piece.
She sits on the stage with a huge script book in front of her, as do her co-stars, Anne Meara, Conchata Ferrell, Minka Kelly and AnnaLynne McCord, and they proceed to share these short stories. Smith is such a natural on stage, between her delivery of the lines, facial gestures and mannerisms. She comes across as very comfortable and fits right in with her co-stars. These five ladies have a great chemistry.
This play and Smith are something that should be seen by mothers and daughters, it is just that kind of play that relates moments between moms and daughters.
Sometimes the laughs are so intense audience members, including myself, were coughing. These stories are amazing, these performances are phenomenal. This is a theatrical experience you will long remember.
Karen Carpenter directs these five actresses with focus and compassion.
It is marvelous to see Smith do stories that are funny and stories that touch the heart and have you feel what each of her characters is going through. But this is also something that you will experience as each of these ladies speak.
Ferrell is especially entertaining, but you’ll see what I mean when you go and experience this play.
B. Smith is part of this rotating cast and will be with the show through May 29, so try to go before then. For ticket information call 212-239-6200.

The Shirelles Music is on Broadway
Broadway has a new musical and it’s about the Jewish housewife who discovered the Shirelles-the Black teenage singing group of the late 50s. The woman was Florence Greenberg and these girls were singers that her daughter Mary Jane  heard at her school.

The talented actresses portraying the Shirelles are Kyra Da Costa, Erica Dorfler, Christina Sajous and Erica Ash. These young ladies perform some of the greatest hits of this girl’s group including “Mama Said,” “Soldier Boy,” “He’s So Fine” and “Baby It’s You.”

The show also takes you on a musical memory lane with performances of hits like “It’s My Party”, “Duke of Earl” and “Our Day Will Come.”
The audience also gets to see the dirty side of the record business with playing off DJs so that they would give records air time.
There’s also a forbidden romance as Greenberg, a wife and mother, falls in love with a Black songwriter named Luther Dixon, the man who wrote “16 Candles”.
There are many entertaining moments in this new musical playing at the  Broadhurst Theatre on W. 44th St.
Beth Leavel plays Greenberg and she is absolutely fantastic. Her acting and singing are on point. But then so is this entire cast, because the ladies who play the Shirelles are marvelous, Allan Louis is charming and an amazing talent as Dixon and Geno Henderson is incredible as he plays multiple roles, every time a Black male singer from the time period of 1958 to 1965 is portrayed Henderson takes on the role 100% and delivers.
This show is just a really wonderful time and the singing is a step back into time.
You should make plans to see this show because besides being entertaining, it’s a true story.  For tickets call 212-239-6200.

Wonderland Is Fun On Broadway
You may know the original story of Alice In Wonderland, about the girl who goes into a rabbit hole and meets all kinds of characters—but forget what you know and go to Wonderland, the new musical playing at the Marquis Theatre in Manhattan.
This musical is an altered telling of the story and one that you will greatly enjoy. It stars E. Clayton Cornelious as the caterpillar and he is absolutely  wonderful. He is joined on stage by a fantastic cast that can sing beyond belief
and includes Janet Dacal, Darren Ritchie, Jose Llana, Karen Mason, Kate Shindle,  Carly Rose Sonenclar, Edward Staudenmayer and Danny Stiles.
This theatrical experience is one you will not forget, as it has great musical numbers, there are dips into hip-hop and that boy singing group kind of style.
It is just a lot of fun.
I don’t want to tell you how they change the story, you need to see it for
yourself, but believe me—you will appreciate it.

On The Aisle

John Leguizamo is Amazing in One-Man Broadway Show–
If you want to have an amazing time at the theater and are ready for a  completely adult experience, then you need to go and see “Ghetto Klown”, the one  man show written by and starring John Leguizamo at the Lyceum Theatre on  Broadway. Fisher Stevens directs Leguizamo as he bares all the issues he has  faced in his life and takes the audience on a poignant journey through his
childhood growing up poor and in the ghetto. Leguizamo is also quick to share the experiences he had growing up with a father he could never please and a mother who used to do and say some wild things.
During this journey that the audience is taken on Leguizamo talks about his past stage productions, which included “Mambo Mouth”, “Spic-O-Rama”, Sexaholic.a Love Story” and “Freak.” He explains how his mother was the inspiration for one production and his father was inspiration for another. His mother was furious with him and asked how he could portray her on stage? His father actually sued him for doing a play about him.
Leguizamo lets the audience know that his father never played ball with him, and never really tried to talk or listen to him. The one lesson that he taught him is not to cry. You have to be a man. When he would whip him and Leguizamo wanted to cry, he would make him sing a song. The only person who showed him love and tried to guide him was his grandfather.
It is quite amusing watching Leguizamo talk about all the big time movie roles he’s had and the famous leading actors he’s played opposite-Al Pacino, Patrick Swayze, Shawn Penn, and Wesley Snipes to name a few. What’s funny is he shares without hesitate that he was a troublemaker on these sets. He did not like sticking to the script. He liked to add in hilarious adlibs. What Leguizamo bares is the fact that he was actually a very difficult person to work with.
He definitely has the audience cracking up when he described his romances. Leguizamo’s morals when he was younger left a lot to be desired. But the consequences of his actions are hilarious.
This is a play that will have you laughing one minute and reflecting on some of the harsh things that have happened to him in his life, the next minute. “Ghetto Klown” is definitely a new installment in the sequence of plays that Leguizamo has decided to do about his career and it is something very much worth seeing and enjoying. Leguizamo has an energy and a flexibility that is marvelous to watch.

Chris Rock on Broadway is For Adults Only
Chris Rock is on Broadway and making his stage debut in a funny, but also  vividly candid play by Stephen Adly Guirgis called, “The Mother…With The Hat”, that’s as much of the name as I dare give. This is also a play strictly for an  adult audience. The play is showing at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on W 45th  St.
Rock plays a former alcoholic named Ralph, who is a sponsor to another Alcoholic Anonymous member, Jackie (played by Bobby Cannavale). Jackie is trying to give  up alcohol, but has a lot more problems then that. His girlfriend Veronica  (played by Elizabeth Rodriguez, also making her Broadway debut) is a drug addict  and she seems to be having an affair. Ralph is married to Victoria (played by Annabella Sciorra, also making her Broadway debut), who is a former drug addict.
These characters definitely have their share of serious issues. Jackie, besides Ralph, has another male on his side, trying to help him stay sober, his cousin Julio (played by Yul Vazquez, again, he is making his Broadway debut), a person that Jackie treats very badly and takes for granted.
From the opening of the first scene this play hits the ground running. There is a lot of explosive, profane dialog between the characters. There are issues that each character reveals and you are taken on a roller coaster ride that has more twists, turns and drops then the cyclone, but it’s a ride you will enjoy. These people have real problems and are fighting the demons of their addictions.
The power of the performances of these cast members is something to be experienced and remembered. Each of these actors was clearly ready to make their Broadway debuts. They have
a marvelous chemistry, that you can’t help put acknowledge. For tickets call 212-239-6200 or go to Telecharge.com.

On The Aisle – 2009: A Year in Review in Black Theater

2009 was an absolutely phenomenal year for Blacks in theater from off-Broadway to Broadway. If you came by the way of Brooklyn, you got to enjoy the magnificent writing of Jackie Alexander, as the Billie Holiday Theatre presented, The High Priestess of Dark Alley with an all-Black cast. A superb production of The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson played at the Public Theatre. It featured a mixed cast which was very talented. It was like watching an expose’ on how the FBI and the Ku Klux Klan worked against Blacks during the Civil Rights Movement down South.
A show that features another mixed cast is on Broadway and is going strong at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, that show is HAIR and it is definitely worth experiencing. When you walk in the theatre and take a seat you are made a part of the Tribe of hippies who believe in free love, flowing drugs and long hair. This show is a blast! Although the show has since closed, the revival of Guys and Dolls on Broadway that starred Titus Burgess in the role of Nicely Nicely Johnson was a pleasure to watch. Burgess rocked the house when he did the character’s signature number “You’re Rocking The Boat.”
When you go to the theater it is truly a gift when you get to see a dramatic production that teaches you about an injustice that Black people have suffered. It shares their trials, but also the fact that they managed to survive. That is the kind of inspiration and heartfelt message that came across to audiences as they were stunned and captivated, while watching Ruined, a drama by Lynn Nottage that played at the New York City Center.  The play shared the true stories of women who had been victimized by soldiers in war torn Democratic Republic of Congo. As you walked around the theatre pictures of actual women Nottage interviewed were displayed on the walls. The play also got Nottage her due, as she received the Pulitzer Prize for it in 2009.
On the lighter side of entertainment, audiences were almost falling out of their chairs onto the floor of the Beacon Theatre when Tyler Perry’s The Marriage Counselor was performed. Perry just has a way with words that make them so down to earth, but hilarious at the same time. The characters he creates remind one of someone you might actually know. His stories are hilarious, but also always have a bit of a religious aspect to them. The marriage counselor’s story reminds one of the expression “physician heal thyself.” It was incredible to watch the revival of August Wilson’s drama Joe Turner’s Come And Gone at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway. It was presented by Lincoln Center and spotlighted the talents of a tremendous, mainly Black cast. In fact, Roger Robinson won the Tony this year for his role.
Tony Award-winner Phylicia Rashad returned to Broadway as Violet Weston in Tracy Lett’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play August Osage County. The comedy/drama played at the Music Box Theatre, and looked at the dysfunctional life of a pill-popping, sharp-tongued mother of three.
Some wonderful shows that had a limited life were Pure Confidence and a revival of The Wiz. Both these shows were wonderful. The first looked at the life story of a slave, who was also a jockey and won races easily. The other production gave Ashanti Singer her chance to debut on stage and it was a magnificent show.
A milestone was reached withDavid Lamb’s Platanos & Collard Greens as it celebrated its sixth year at the Florence Guild Hall on 59th St. The funny production looks at relationships between Blacks and Latinos and discloses stereotypes they have about each other.
Roger Guenvere Smith performed his one-man Frederick Douglass Now at the Irish Arts Center. The Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center premiered Broke-ology, a play by African-American playwright Nathan Louis Jackson. The drama featured an all-Black cast and showed how two brothers struggled over the decision of how to take care of an ill father. FELA! made its explosive Broadway debut and celebrates the life, music and political struggles of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the father of the Afrobeat. This musical is at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre at W. 49th St.
Some other wonderful shows that happened in 2009 was Sing Harlem Sing at the Dempsey Theatre on W. 127th St. There was River Crosses Rivers-Short Plays by Women of Color at the Castillo Theatre and was presented by New Federal Theatre. It featured plays by Lynn Nottage, Ruby Dee, P.J. Gibson, Naveen Bahar Choudhury, Cori Thomas and Bridgette Wimberly. A new original Broadway musical is Memphis at the Shubert Theatre on W 44th St.  Dreamgirls came to the Apollo Theatre before going on tour. Anna Deavere Smith’s Let Me Down Easy made its New York premiere and it was moving to watch. A comedy/drama, Superior Donuts by Tracy Letts played at the Music Box Theatre and served as the Broadway debut vehicle for young African-American actor Jon Michael Hill. Finian’s Rainbow opened on Broadway and is still playing featuring Chuck Cooper. Ragtime has been revived and is being brilliantly presented at the Neil Simon Theatre.
In 2010, let me just mention some of the names that will be on Broadway, Denzel Washington, Vanessa Williams, Norm Lewis, Ron Cephas Jones and Antony Mackie.