By Tom Scanlon
ACT
closes July 9
Set in the '60s, in Harlem, Wine in the Wilderness is a one-act play that perhaps too easily jumps into a happy ending. It’s easy to forgive this, though, as Alice Childress creates such charming characters, communicating in such entertaining dialogue. If you can imagine August Wilson in a larkish mood, you can imagine this play. Childress was exploring the African-American experience years before Wilson lit up the theater scene, and her artistic courage and gift with words is wonderfully displayed, here.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Childress is that her dialogue is equally believable, whether spoken by a woman or man. Often-times, playwrights struggle to write for characters of the opposite sex.
This is best illustrated in the scene in which artist Bill (Shanga Parker) and hard-drinking layabout Oldtimer (William Hall Jr.) talk about the kind of woman they hate.
April Yvette Thompson’s Tommy soon swaggers on stage, and eventually has those two scratching their heads, pondering their assumptions.
Bill’s transition from a cold-hearted artist who cares only about himself and his work into a romantic figure is far too simple; Childress doesn’t make him hurt and sweat enough to become a man. And Tommy similarly goes from crass to class in a few easy pages . . . It's a Harlem version of Pygmalion that fast forwards a bit too much to be fully satisfying.
But it’s hard to care about that, in the moment, as Thompson gives such a charismatic, dynamic performance – hilarious, yet rooted enough to make you really care about her path.
“Dated”? Not really, as this play holds up strong as a nice slice-of-fantasy from a period in American history yet to be fully explored. Cheers to Curtis-Newton and company.
