LaChanze makes her New York directoral debut with 'Wine in the Wilderness'

 

After sitting through Classic Stage Company’s production of Alice Childress’ 1969 play Wine in the Wilderness last night I can understand why it is rarely staged.  Set in 1964 Harlem during a hot summer night, the play lack a focus.  I doubt if Tony Award-winning actress/singer LaChanze, making her New York directorial debut, could have remedied that.

A riot is going on outside of the apartment of artist Bill Jameson (Grantham Coleman).  We hear breaking glass — lots of breaking glass — interspersed through the jazz playing as the audience waits for the show to start at CSC’s Lynn F. Angelson Theater.  Bill is working on a triptych about Black womanhood and has asked his neighbors Cynthia (Lakisha May) and Sonny-man (Brooks Brantly) to find him a model for his third and final panel.  The first is of a sweet young girl, the middle painting, which he calls Wine in the Wilderness, is a foxy woman in red.  He wants “a messed-up chick” to pose for the third frame and, from the chaos outside, they bring him Tomorrow “Tommy” Marie (Olivia Washington).  

While initially it seems this will be Bill’s play, before long we see that it is Tommy’s, which is unfortunate.  I liked Bill and how he was portrayed but Washington’s Tommy was annoying from start to finish.  Wearing a wig of long blonde hair with an up-curl and bangs (wig & hair design by Nikiya Mathis), she is the stereotypical ditz.  Until the wig comes off and she isn’t.  But her transformation is so swift I was left wondering why she was suddenly a strong Black feminist.  She overplayed both sides of Tommy.  

Arnulfo Maldonado’s set worked for me.  It’s Bill’s cozy/sloppy artist’s studio with its unfinished triptych at one end and living area with a table stacked with books at the other.  Even though it was only one room it felt spacious

Childress’ play Trouble in Mind had a successful run on Broadway in 2021 starring LaChanze as an actress of a certain age who has spent her career playing mammies, maids and other subservient characters.  When she lands a decent role in a Broadway-bound play dealing with racism, and that racism begins materializing in the rehearsal room she must decide whether to speak up or keep her job.  That had sounded promising to me but I didn’t like that show either so maybe it’s just that this playwright doesn’t speak to me.