Tag Archives: LeShea Stukes

Dialing Up the Almighty in Memphis

Review: The Mountaintop at Theatre Charlotte

by Perry Tannenbaum

A stage with a particularly authentic – or imaginative – set design is a good start for a director who wishes to immerse you in the world of a play. Yet few productions surround you with the theatre experience, making you feel outside your own world and inside theirs. Sleep No More was dedicated to achieving this mission with a Macbeth makeover up in Manhattan’s Chelsea district at a spooky hotel, where I saw it in 2015. So was Then She Fell the following night in Brooklyn, where I was plunged into the imagination – and mental illness – of Lewis Carroll.

In Charlotte, such efforts have been comparatively infrequent, but not unknown: Chickspeare’s Fefu and Her Friends on Cullman Avenue in 2001, numerous “environmental” productions by Carolina Actor’s Studio Theatre (CAST) in their days on Clement Avenue, and Matt Cosper’s legendary Bohemian Grove of 2014 that was staged god-knows-where – you had to agree to be kidnapped in a van by The Machine at the Actor’s Theatre parking lot to attend.

They do make an impression, these hyper-immersive presentations.

Cut to the legendary Queens Road Barn for the latest Queen City experiment in environmental staging. Yes, that’s Theatre Charlotte – in Myers Park! – on the cutting edge with its new production of Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop. Directed by the ageless Corlis Hayes and designed by Chris Timmons – with a nine-person “Lobby Transformation” team – this is the first fully-staged drama my wife Sue and I have seen in the 501 Queens Road lobby since the spare and forlorn Waiting for GODot in 2007.

Together with invaluable help from David Gallo, set designer for the 2011 Broadway production, and props designer Brodie Jasch from Fayetteville’s Theatre Squared, Dr. Hayes and her production team aim to take us back to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on the night of April 3, 1968. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., returns from the Mason Temple, where he has just delivered his eerily prophetic “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.

Every detail of the last room occupied by MLK has been replicated with meticulous authenticity – night tables and their contents, lamps, the chair and its fabric next to the window, the window curtains, the bed coverings – all the way down to the upside-down zero on the door to Room 306. With walls within walls, you must enter through this door to get your first view of the new theatre space in the lobby created for this production. Only the ceiling remains unaltered, with its fans and extinguished holiday lights. Explanations are appended in the digital program for those details which couldn’t be ascertained and those that would have conflicted with Hall’s script.

Since there is no intermission and all the usual concession outposts have been whisked away, they have thoughtfully made “Room Service” available to ticketholders via a QR code. In more ways than one, we are treated like kings at The Lorraine. Fun fact: the fateful motel was actually named after the hit 1928 song, “Sweet Lorraine,” popularized by jazz artists Teddy Wilson and Nat “King” Cole.

For all of Dr. Hayes’s reverent devotion to getting the look and feel of The Lorraine recreated as faithfully as she can, we soon see that it isn’t a shrine. Hayes is equally bent on getting to the heart of Hall’s pointedly irreverent drama. Hall provides ample time for solemnity and anguish at the end, but until then, she wants us to see the soon-to-be-martyred icon as a man, not a god, and not even as a holy man. The real Martin – or as God likes to call him, Michael – had his foibles, vices, and infidelities.

And notwithstanding the resounding valedictory declarations of the Memphis speech we’ve heard over and over – “So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man” – Hall insists on reminding us that King did have worries and fears.

All obeisance to King’s saintly aura is swiftly discarded almost as soon as we see Justin Peoples taking on the role, before he walks through the audience to take a pee. Not only is he unkempt after his oratorical exertions and his walk through the rain, he has largely dropped his dignified public persona, at ease if not quite relaxed. Though he diligently examines his room’s rotary phone to make sure it isn’t bugged, we can hear that he has switched from formal to casual mode as soon as he speaks. It’s with an unmistakably Southern accent!

Immediately disarming. Neither the touring production by the famed Penumbra Theatre of Minneapolis that ran at Booth Playhouse in 2014, nor the homegrown Actor’s Theatre run of 2018 at Queens University, directed by April Jones, had quite the same spontaneous or undignified impact. The smallness of the lobby space at the Queens Road Barn certainly helps in establishing a closer intimacy with King and a sharper look at his vulnerabilities.

Maybe that folksy drawl would have been even more impactful if Peoples had held back on it until MLK had dialed room service after normal closing hours. The arrival of LeShea Stukes as the fetching Camae, a housemaid moonlighting as King’s waitress, would have been a good moment for Peoples to turn on the Southern charm. But for those of us who have seen The Mountaintop before, Stukes brings with her more than Camae’s sensual allure, more than her extra Pall Malls to satisfy King’s chain-smoking, and more than her working-class sass.

She now gives us solemn glances from behind King’s back, fully aware of the gravity of her true mission before she discloses it, morphing from pursued damsel to admonishing paramour to chum to messenger of God. None of these fresh wrinkles quite accounts for the marvelous voodoo or the juju that Hayes, Peoples, and Stukes have conjured up in creating the playful, poignant, and profound chemistry of this Camae and MLK.

Lighting designer Jennifer O’Kelly gently signals those moments when Camae might be contemplating why she’s there, foreshadowing the AV extravaganza that will accompany Stukes’ final mountaintop revelations. She will almost be speaking in tongues when we reach this visionary summit.

There’s little theology here, for when King dials up the Almighty, pleading his case for more time on this turbulent planet, she hangs up on him. Yet there just may be some deep dialectic in Hall’s scheme that narrows the gap that we might feel between God’s biblical judgment upon Moses at Mount Nebo and the judgment upon Martin in Memphis.

Moses was given a precise catalog of his greatest sins. Maybe in an afterlife he learned not to shatter any holy tablets or assault a boulder without God’s approval. But what was the great sin that deprived MLK of the Promised Land that awaited his people? The answer never comes explicitly in the play, but King’s sins – though relatively petty until we consider possible adultery – are graven in its marrow.

In an age when not a day goes by without yielding fresh images, outrages, and crimes committed by a lying orange buffoon, we might find ourselves shocked to be shoved towards such traditional moral moorings. Some of these values were written long ago in our marrow. Leading a people may still require adhering to a higher standard in God’s job description, not flouting the laws and proprieties that apply to everyone else.

Peoples and Stukes, with plenty of finely judged assistance, have found a way to make The Mountaintop more poignant, relatable, and human. Hall’s work becomes more touching, meaningful, and necessary each time I see it.

BNS Productions’ “Two Trains Running” Runs at Full Steam With a Deep Cast

Review: Two Trains Running

By Perry Tannenbaum

Like all of the other plays I’ve seen in August Wilson’s epic Pittsburgh Cycle and I’ve now seen nine of the 10 – Two Trains Running is about community struggle and personal redemption. Each of the dramas digs into one of decades of the 20^th century, and after Brand New Sheriff began its Wilson explorations with Jitney and the 1950s, their sophomore effort at Spirit Square takes us into the turbulent 1960s.

With so much memorable social and civil rights upheaval in that decade, not to mention the horrifying Birmingham church bombing and the assassinations of Medgar Evers and MLK, it’s no surprise that community struggles are more at the forefront of this Wilson work than the others. As it was in the ‘50s, when we looked on the city through Jitney, Pittsburgh is continuing its predatory campaign to demolish the predominantly black Hill District in the name of urban renewal. After Becker’s gypsy cab depot in Jitney, the city is moving in on Memphis Lee’s Restaurant.

Another young man is returning from incarceration and trying start a new life – but not quietly this time. Sterling is handing out leaflets for an upcoming Black Power rally and befriending Hambone, a mentally handicapped person who was cheated years ago by the white grocer across the street. At the same time, Sterling is seeking out a job or at least a lead from everyone else he speaks to at the restaurant. Standing up for other black people cheated by a white system – and for himself – Sterling is clearly a powder keg that will soon go off.

Memphis estimates that he’ll be back in prison in three weeks. As the days pass and he sees more of Sterling, who grabs whatever he can, Memphis will revise that estimate downwards.

Sterling teaches Hambone a Black Power slogan, but Memphis isn’t so easily swayed. It’s the central issue for black people of that time, especially here in 1969 after the MLK murder. Do they wait patiently and peacefully for what is rightfully theirs, marching and petitioning to make their wishes known – or do they resort to the same kind of violence that kept their people down? Memphis insists on doing things the right way, holding out for a fair price from the city for his property, firing the craven lawyer who advises him to cave.

Looking at Memphis’s regular customers, you’ll find additional evidence that MLK’s ideas didn’t die with him. Nobody intends to join the rally. A more popular road to self-fulfillment is winning the daily numbers game at odds of 600-1, and it’s Wolf who haunts the place, taking all bets, often through unauthorized use of the restaurant’s phone. The sagely and cynical Holloway will play a number as readily as Memphis or Sterling, but to change your life, Holloway recommends a visit to Aunt Ester, the 322-year-old soothsayer who lurks behind a faithfully guarded red door in an alley down the block.

Risa, the troubled waitress who has scarred herself, disparages the men who throw their money away on the numbers. To her mind, they’d get a better return from their quarters if they just dropped them in the jukebox. Until recently, she’s been a follower of the Prophet Samuel, but currently her rock and redeemer is lying in state across the street at West’s Funeral Home. She has no desire to see the man in a casket, but Sterling goes through the long lines waiting to see the Prophet and snatches flowers from the site and presents them to Risa, whose head he’s trying to turn.

It’s another illustrative instance of Sterling flouting decorum and convention. Why should her qualms get in the way of enjoying a few beautiful flowers that would die and be trashed in the next couple of days if she weren’t caring for them? West certainly doesn’t notice or mind, Sterling maintains. It’s true. When West comes by every day, he’s looking for Risa to serve him another cup of coffee and Memphis to accept his latest lowball offer for the restaurant.

The parallel rituals are significant, two of the sparkplugs that keep Wilson’s drama humming. The grocer fends off Hambone’s daily demand for the ham that was promised to him, and Memphis refuses to allow West to steal his property away for a bargain price.

BNS and director Corlis Hayes, in their second Wilson outing at Duke Energy Theater, are getting really good at this. Although smaller than the design the playwright describes, James Duke’s set captures the spirit of the time beautifully, perfectly calibrating the restaurant’s waning appeal so that we see it as a warm, welcoming place. Or at least we can imagine it that way, for Tim Bradley as Memphis is not at all the deferential restauranteur, arguing with customers, barking at Wolf for running numbers on his phone, bragging about duping West, bossing Risa unnecessarily, and expressing general disdain for his lazy people.

That’s all very much on the page, so Bradley finds ways to keep us empathizing with Memphis. Hayes and LeShea Stukes have far more latitude with Risa as we watch the waitress going about her job and reacting to various advances. Stukes plays her as sullen and cynical, allowing Risa’s resentment of her boss’s scolding tone to occasionally surface. Seeing her smile late in Act 2 is like seeing the sun come out after fives days of stormy weather. By the time that happens, we may suspect that the jukebox being out of order is troubling Risa as much as Prophet Samuel’s death and her boss’s bossiness.

Devin Clark struts around as Wolf like an arrogant sleazeball, but there are more depths, contours, and vulnerabilities to him than the iconic Sportin’ Life as he talks about himself and strikes out with Risa. Ramsey Lyric’s costume designs certainly help Clark strut his stuff, but they also help us to chart Jonavan Adams’s progress in his portrayal of Sterling, fresh out of prison. Hayes and Adams have worked together before on Wilson’s plays, so they both know the strength, the brashness, and the seething frustrations of these strapping young men. Trust me, Adams’ work as Sterling is even more powerful and nuanced than his 2017 outing as Levee in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

BNS continues to have admirable depth in their Wilson lineups. You can understand why Jermaine A. Gamble would gravitate to a role as salty as Holloway, whose sharp observations are mixed with a strong belief in the supernatural, expressed in an unwavering advocacy of Aunt Ester’s powers. Gamble makes Holloway a reasonable man, good reason for having this kind of restaurant around. He’s the neighborhood. But the disruptive Hambone, restricted to little more than one repeated line, wouldn’t jump out at you as a plum role to audition for. Dominic Weaver makes it one in a performance of astonishing intensity and authenticity.

It was probably a group effort to make Weaver look so frightfully grubby as Hambone, but Lyric and Hayes draw my kudos for the sensation West makes each time he enters. Wilson prescribes that the undertaker is always dressed in an all-black outfit, including black gloves that he wears indoors, but designers only add a black hat in about half the productions I’ve tracked on YouTube – and none of them are as imposing as the formal chapeau Lyric chooses for Sultan Omar El-Amin. Hayes layers onto this formality, decreeing that El-Amin must meticulously spread a napkin across his lap at each sitting.

With such outré ammo, El-Amin steals each of his scenes without raising his voice to a level that might lead you to seriously suspect that he doubts his own power. By the manner he holds his cup and saucer, you’d think he was at high tea! From a man who has specialized in portrayals of angry, resentful, and mixed-up young men, El-Amin’s confidently restrained performance as an established 60-year-old widower is a stunner.

Two Trains Running at Spirit Square is a good place to climb aboard the complete Pittsburgh Cycle that BNS is planning to present in coming seasons. You won’t miss a thing because BNS is planning to reprise its previous production of Jitney in May. Then they plan to present Radio Golf, the final drama in the Cycle – and Wilson’s last completed play – next season. Two Trains is not the last stop, but you’ll need to catch it this week before it closes.