Night Watcher, The

Charlayne Woodard is back with another one-person show, her fourth. In The Night Watcher, the vivacious, charismatic Woodard takes immediate control of the stage and holds it tightly in her grasp for the next two hours. Her subjects are motherhood, children and familial responsibility, all of which she discusses anectdotally and passionately, keeping herself front and center.

The African-American Woodard opens by talking about an urgent phone call she once got from a famous actress urging her (and her white husband) to adopt a baby from a mixed-race couple. The childless Woodard must then make a big decision, whether or not to give up her much-savored freedom and devote the next twenty years of her life to the raising of a child.

Woodard opted out of becoming a mother, despite being nurturing and compassionate by nature. Out of guilt, she admits, she then did everything she could to become involved in the lives of her nieces and nephews. Their problems with drugs, sex, unwanted pregnancy and abusive parents are dramatized in skillful fashion by Woodard, who takes on the posture and voices of myriad characters in a twinkling, utilizing dialogue that's by turns snappy and funny, then angry and shocking. It's not easy to help kids today, not even for someone as well-meaning as Woodard.