Fresh Loaf

FELLOWSHIP OF THE SING: Shay Latte as an angel (left), Galen Williams as Joseph, Kelly Young as Mary, Sam Collier as an angel

Audiences could be forgiven for worrying that True Colors Theatre Company’s Black Nativity might evoke a high school’s annual birth of Jesus holiday pageant. The perennial musical’s first half takes place “When Christ was born” and hits all the requisite beats of the first Christmas: angels, shepherds, Magi, etc. Plus, True Colors follows a similar approach as its recent holiday productions of The Wiz by casting primarily high school and college students as well as some recent graduates.

Fortunately, Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity resembles a revue more than a plot-and-character-driven musical. The material turns out to be an ideal vehicle for the young ensemble, since director/choreographer Patdro Harris and music director J. Michael can cast to the performers’ individual strengths, while acting never really becomes an issue. (more…)

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November 5 may have been either the most or the least opportune night for the Atlanta premiere of True Colors Theatre’s Swimming Upstream, a star-studded evening of stories, songs and spoken-word poetry about Hurricane Katrina and the women of New Orleans.

Everyone in the 14^th Street Playhouse seemed charged with excitement over the previous day’s election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. In the curtain speech, True Colors artistic director Kenny Leon said “I’m glad we’re all here the night after we’ve elected a new president” before adding, of Swimming Upstream, “This is probably the most important, best written show I’ve ever worked on.”

The way was developed by African-American theater True Colors in partnership with New Orleans’ Ashé Cultural Arts Center and the V-Day movement opposed to violence against women, organized by The Vagina Monologues‘ Eve Ensler. Ensler teared up during her introductory remarks and said, “Welcome to the New World. I can’t believe we’re opening this play on this night. It’s too perfect.”

Despite the thrill over the prospect of the new White House, Swimming Upstream demands the audience shift some emotional gears to revisit arguably the lowest moment of the current administration.

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Which is worth more, a bucket of nails or a multimillion-dollar development project? Watch the two plays of the Alliance Theatre’s August Wilson Full Circle, a theatrical event more than 20 years in the making, and you’ll discover they have equal value: Each may be precisely worth the life of an African-American man.

Full Circle stages the Atlanta debuts of the final two plays in playwright August Wilson’s “Century Cycle” of heavyweight dramas. Also called “the Pittsburgh Cycle,” Wilson’s landmark project consists of 10 plays, mostly set in Pittsburgh’s African-American Hill District, with each script representing a different decade of the 20th century.

The Gem of the Ocean, set in 1904, takes place in a house on Pittsburgh’s Wylie Street, and involves two men whose fates hinge on a seemingly trivial theft from an oppressive mill. In Radio Golf, ambitious developer Harmond Wilks sets his fortune on a 1997 land deal that will launch his mayoral campaign and revitalize the Hill District, unless questions over that same Wylie Street house demolish his plans.

The Gem of the Ocean/Radio Golf twofer, playing on alternate nights and featuring the same actors doubling up, would be must-see theater based on the strength of the shows alone. August Wilson Full Circle proves even bigger than the sum of its parts. It marks the beginning of the Alliance Theatre’s 40th anniversary season, caps off the late playwright’s epic decalogue of American theater, and provides a kind of personal culmination and homecoming for director Kenny Leon, former artistic director of the Alliance.

Read the rest of this article here.

(Photo by Greg Mooney)

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I saw the Sunday matinee of True Colors Theatre Company’s The Amen Corner, but artistic director Kenny Leon was not there to introduce it with his typical effervescence. It had somehow escaped my attention that, Leon had been directing Flashdance: The Musical, which just opened at England’s Theatre Royal in Plymouth.

After an esteemed stint as the Alliance Theatre’s artistic director, Leon has become a director of Broadway and national stature, most recently with his Emmy-nominated TV movie of A Raisin in the Sun. He has certainly directed musicals in the past, but the genre never seemed like his first love, making him a surprising choice for the musicalization of the 1983 Jennifer Beals movie. Just imagine the costume budget for leg warmers in numbers like “She’s a Maniac.” If you need your Flashdance memory refreshed, here’s a clip of the final dance number, as interpreted by a Boba Fett action figure. (Be sure to watch it to the end.)

The only aesthetic connection that I see between Leon and Flashdance is so tenuous that it can’t possibly be correct, but here goes:
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“A Raisin in the Sun,” the TV movie directed by Atlanta’s Kenny Leon, artistic director of True Colors Theatre, earned three Emmy Award nominations yesterday. Based on Leon’s 2004 Broadway staging of the Lorraine Hansberry stage play, “A Raisin in the Sun” won nominations for Best Made for Television Movie, Best Actress for Phylicia Rashad and Best Supporting Actress for the particularly worthy Sanaa Lathan.

Coincidentally, I happened to be interviewing one of the Best Supporting Actor nominees while the Emmys were being announced. Rainn Wilson, who plays the sublimely jerky assistant manager/beet farmer Dwight Schrute on “The Office,” was in town promoting his comedy The Rocker, which opens nationwide on August 20. Cool as a the proverbial cucumber (or less proverbial beet), Wilson chatted with me about his work during our interview at the W Hotel, completely ignoring the Emmy announcements being televised in a room away. At some point after chatting with me, Wilson stopped by the CNN newsroom for an impromptu weather report:

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