Ines de la Cruz and Patrice Jean-Baptiste in the Lyric Stage production of “Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous.”
The Lyric Stage Boston production of “Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous,” on stage through Sunday, April 12, at the company’s 224-seat theater in Copley Square, fully lives up to the verve of the play and its title.
This 2019 play by Pearl Cleage, distinguished artist in residence at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, like her 1995 play “Blues for an Alabama Sky,” which received an excellent production last June at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, follows a quartet of characters whose interactions yield unexpected turns in their lives.
In this play, four African American women who span three generations come together over one day in the posh suite of an Atlanta hotel occupied by performance artist Anna Campbell and her lifelong friend and agent Betty Samson. They are guests of producer Kate Hughes, age 45, who has invited Anna to be honored at an event she has organized titled “Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous: A Festival of Women’s Voices.”
Twenty-five years ago, as a freshman drama major at Spelman College, Kate was dazzled by Anna’s performance of “Naked Wilson,” in which Anna stood naked on stage while reciting monologues from plays of renowned playwright August Wilson (1945-2005). With her performance, she challenged the Black male lens of Wilson’s works. As Anna explains, “The story was always and forever about their blues, not ours.”
Her performance caused a firestorm and no Black theaters would hire her. Offered a residency in Amsterdam, she and Betty have spent 20 years in Europe, but now, both age 65 and facing dwindling offers of acting gigs, they readily accepted Kate’s invitation to Atlanta, where, following the festival they face an uncertain future.
Betty desires a home of their own; while Anna anticipates performing “Naked Wilson,” undaunted by displaying her aging body, and hopes the event will launch a new phase in her artistic career.
When Kate breaks the news to Anna that instead of performing “Naked Wilson” she will be receiving a lifetime achievement award, Anna is outraged; her rage is heightened when she finds out that the performance artist Kate has hired is a 25-year-old pole dancer.
Leading a stellar group of Boston theater artists, the Lyric Stage production is directed by award-winning actor, playwright and producer Jacqui Parker, with scenic design by Janie E. Howland, costumes by Chelsea Kerl and lighting by Karen Perlow.
Unfolding without intermission over 100 minutes, the one-act play spans 24 hours in its two scenes. Moving as well as highly entertaining, the production, like the play, is poetic and accompanies its strong cast with evocative staging that integrates costumes, sets and lighting in a shifting, ever-harmonious palette.
At last Wednesday’s matinee, their first performance before a live audience due to a COVID outbreak that curbed rehearsal time, the cast of four actors made the most of Cleage’s witty and poignant script. They created palpable chemistry with each other and the audience, which demonstrated delight in the play’s many humorous and truth-telling lines and won sympathy for each character — even the divas.
Patrice Jean-Baptiste as Anna Campbell and Yasmeen Duncan as the equally volcanic Precious “Pete” Watson, a burlesque performer who aspires to do more with her talents, avoided caricature despite their characters’ high-wattage presence. And neither dominated in their operatic exchanges; instead, they brought out each other’s best.
Deannah “Dripp” Blemur is the resourceful, determined Kate Hughes. As Betty Samson, Inés de la Cruz injects the play’s subdued part with quiet power, grace and warmth, as well as notes of humor and fathomless patience.
Nature, too, has a part in the stage alchemy. A steady rain erupts into a thunderstorm at pivotal moments. When Betty unlocks the French doors to see the rain, silver drops cascade like a veil, transforming the suite into a place open to magic.
Nature is also present in the play’s acknowledgement of aging and change as well as its celebration of the power of art to make what is unlikely seem not just possible but inevitable.
Cleage’s play makes room for miracles, including interventions by unnamed and unseen characters, such as an audience member who after tossing the naked Anna her fur coat disappears into a limousine; and a stranger on a street who accompanies Anna in witnessing an act of artistic heroism equal to her own.
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Learn more at lyricstage.com