The first act of
Lynn Nottage’s BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK (at Lyric Stage through April 27th)
is a merry send-up of Hollywood missteps,
specifically in vintage movies where African-American actors almost always
appeared as maids, slaves and chauffeurs. Not that contemporary movies fare a
whole lot better. If you remember, Octavia Spencer got an Oscar last year for her
role as a maid in THE HELP. But I digress.
Christopher
Durang mined the same laughter-born-of-shame in his riotous HISTORY OF THE
AMERICAN FILM but Nottage adds another layer, offering a follow-up in Act II,
so we can meet the characters decades later, still talking about their seminal
roles.
Nottage takes
well aimed swipes at several icons of American cinema, for example, loosely blending
SHOWBOAT (filmed three times and in every version a white actress in “coffee”
make-up plays the mixed race role Lena Horne could have devoured) with GONE
WITH THE WIND (Nottage crosses state lines and transforms GWTW into THE BELLE
OF NEW ORLEANS).
In BY THE WAY,
MEET VERA STARK a starlet named Gloria Mitchell (who may be “passing” for
white) is as anxious to land the role of the Southern Belle (who may be passing
for white) as is her maid, Vera Stark, to land the cringe worthy servant role
in the aforementioned melodrama. (Hang in there. It’s not as complicated as it
sounds.) Nottage spoofs the whole genre, from soup to nuts, aided and abetted
in the Lyric production by Jonathan Carr, the wunderkind who filmed the
outrageous faux movie results.
Director Summer
L. Williams gets hilarious performances from the entire ensemble, with Kami
Rushell Smith a standout as Vera Stark. Hannah Husband is deliciously
distracted as Vera’s employer/confidante/sister? (This is sounding like Faye
Dunaway in CHINATOWN), with Kris Sidberry a smash
hit as the smart cookie who hoodwinks a pompous Russian film director (the
wonderful Gregory Balla) and a dyspeptic producer (the wry Kelby T. Akin).
Lyndsay Allyn Cox almost steals away the show as Vera’s wisecracking gal pal and
Terrell Donnell Sledge makes marvelous music as his own one-man band.
Act II is art
imitating art imitating life. Nottage reunites Vera and Gloria years later on a
television talk show. That public appearance is then dissected in a university
forum by a present day filmmaker and two experts in the field of historical and
cultural literacy. (The abundance of debate makes Act II less rewarding than
the first act but still plenty funny).
Here’s what
intrigued me. Why would Nottage visit the characters again later? Might Vera’s
public appearance in the ‘60s have been inspired by Butterfly McQueen? This
occurs to me because McQueen, who played GWTW’s most famous character (OK, maybe
Scarlet is more famous), made appearances at colleges in the late ‘60s. I saw
her at Boston University, holding forth on any number
of subjects with that incongruous, squeaky, little “Prissy” voice. Of course, what
the students really wanted to hear was that infamous line about “birthin’
babies!” Shameful as those images are, they’re the ones we remember.
Hats off to
Nottage for showing how ridiculous, not to mention immoral, the practice of
restricting roles is.
