Sometimes it all comes together. The actors really act and don't just mouth the lines. The singers really sing and don't just insinuate a tune. And the director somehow knows that his art is closely related to choreography, that it's about the visually pleasing movement of bodies through space. Add a set just as bold as the lives that inhabit it, costumes that charm with their simple candor or slick audacity, and, holding it all together, a good-natured beauty of a script — and you've got Spunk at American Stage, as adapted by George C. Wolfe from Zora Neale Hurston's short stories.
This is an enchanting evening of theater, an inspiring work of dramatic art that, like a Rembrandt painting, suffuses its subjects in a dignity that somehow extends to the spectator also. Looking for a good time? See Spunk. It's boisterous and bluesy and won't let you down.
On the surface, at least, Spunk is just three Hurston short stories turned, a little quirkily, into theater. The first one, "Sweat," is about washerwoman Delia Jones, her philandering and abusive husband, Sykes, and the rattlesnake that Sykes brings home one day in a soap box. "Story in Harlem Slang" is about two zoot-suited "pimps" (defined by an onstage character as men "whose amatory talents are for sale to any woman") and their competition for the favors of a streetwise young domestic. "The Gilded Six-Bits" is about the lovers Joe and Missie, and what happens when Joe discovers Missie in bed with wealthy ice cream parlor owner Otis D. Slemmons.
The stories aren't only dramatized; in part they're narrated directly to the audience, and in part they're sung. And their trajectories don't include political or ideological overtones; unlike more indignant writers like August Wilson or Alice Walker, Hurston/Wolfe here just to celebrate African-American lives, to show their beauty and grandeur and limitless relevance. Anyone can relate to these tales of love and betrayal, fear and rivalry, disappointment and vindication.
And anyone can take pleasure in the wonderful language. Much of the appeal of Spunk is in the consistently imaginative diction of its characters, their always surprising and entertaining mix of nonstandard English with virtually classical metaphors. For example, a character first compares some wives to sugar cane, "round, juicy an' sweet," then they're wrung dry of every pleasure until their thoughtless husbands throw them away. Or, from one of the narrators, about a faded love: "Anything like flowers had long ago been drowned in the salty stream that had been pressed from her heart." "Story in Harlem Slang" is a delight to the ear from first moment to last, as when the character Jelly (a synonym for "sex") answers the question, "What's cookin'?" with: "Oh, just like the bear, I ain't no where. Like the bear's brother, I ain't no further. Like the bear's daughter, ain't got a quarter."
The script of Spunk actually comes with a glossary, defining words like "astorperious" (haughty, biggity), "Beluthahatchie" (next station beyond Hell) and "frail eel" (pretty girl). But just as it's possible to understand Shakespeare without grasping each and every Elizabethan usage, you can have a lot of fun with this argot even when it leaves you guessing. And much of Spunk is simple and sweet — for example, when the Girl rebukes Jelly and Sweet Back: "I wouldn't give you air if you was stopped up in a jug. I'm not putting out a thing. I'm just like the cemetery. I'm not putting out, I'm takin' in. ... I'll tell you like the farmer told the potato — plant you now and dig you later."
If the language doesn't get you, the music (by composer Chic Street Man) surely will. Two characters especially are responsible for the tunes that punctuate Spunk (though others contribute also). The Blues Professor, played winningly by Nathan Burton, performs on piano and guitar, sometimes framing a scene with his music, sometimes singing quietly beneath an unfolding conversation. And Blues Speak Woman, unforgettably portrayed by Sharon E. Scott, is anywhere and everywhere with her lovely voice, turning the action into blues only seconds after it's occurred.
Burton and Scott's acting is just as pleasing as their singing, and the performances of Tawanna Benbow, Brian Marable and Raphael Peacock are simply delightful from start to finish. It's not often that I see acting as powerful as Benbow's when, as Delia in "Sweat," she finds herself locked into a marriage that's getting worse every moment. And it's not often that I see a portrayal as convincing as Marable's when, as Joe in "The Gilded Six-Bits," he discovers his wife's infidelity and retreats into an enigmatic, mute melancholy.
Kenneth Noel Mitchell's fine staging emphasizes the unpredictable, asymmetrical lives being portrayed here, and Lino Toyos' multileveled set in red and green is just as impudent — and appropriate — as the loud zoot suits costumer Toni L. Wright puts on dueling pimps Jelly and Sweet Back.
Is there anything missing from Spunk? Well, yes and no. Hurston/Wolfe's determination to accept these mostly impoverished, socially oppressed characters on their own terms is both refreshing and vaguely unsatisfying: One can't help but wonder why the author's moral outrage doesn't surface, how she can restrain her righteous indignation for so long. And in fact, if Spunk reminds me of other artworks, it's not of the theater of black protest so much as of certain 19th century operas, with their insistence on emotion and more emotion to the exclusion of social commentary or intellectual investigation. Without these extra dimensions, Spunk fails to be a complete experience. But I suspect that Hurston/Wolfe wouldn't have it any other way, and that I'm asking for an illumination the author never intended to give.
Because, total experience or not, Spunk is handsome dramatic fun, a real joy to the eyes, ears and heart.
Catch it if you can.
Waiting for Dinner. I've been known to complain about how long it takes for certain celebrated Off-Broadway and regional successes to make it to the Tampa Bay area. Well, I'm happy to report that one of those plays is coming — not to the immediate area, true, but near enough if you love theater. Dinner With Friends, Donald Margulies' Pulitzer Prize-winning (year 2000) opus about marriage and divorce will premiere on Dec. 18 at Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota. This is doubly good news because FST productions regularly evidence the highest standards in acting and design. So OK, Sarasota's an hour's drive for some readers. On the other hand, a nearer performance might not be here for another decade. So go with the sure thing.
For FST tickets and info, call 941-366-9000.
