It isn’t your usual musical theater. It’s three slices of life as lived in the 1920s-’30s in a small African-American town in central Florida with a side trip to Harlem. And its characters talk the talk of time and places.
Exploring relationships between the sexes, all come to us via Guitar Man, a guru who strums up a storm or more subtly suggests how we should think and feel. Blues Speak Woman often helps him or joins five other actors in narrating to commenting on to propelling the action.
Suave Guitar Man Sammy Blue masters the blues characterizing “Sweat,” the opener of Spunk that shows us a 15 year marriage gone sour. The formidable Yohance Myles, cruel husband to Candace C. Culcleasure’s long-suffering Delia, beats and berates her for being thin and doing laundry for whites. He spends his time and love on a big woman (masked Deidra Grace, stepping out of her Blues Speak persona). When Delia’s husband leaves a snake to scare and maybe even kill her, she figures out a means of revenge.
“The Story in Harlem Slang” brings both vaudeville and verity to a meeting of two would-be male prostitutes in loud-colored zoot suits with ribboned hats and long key chains. Joel Patrick King, as Man One, deftly tries to pass for a Harlem native, but Earley Dean Wilson III’s Jelly pegs him as being a Russian (Southern who rushed north). The two jive and zip as if in a ballet. They see a girl (Candace, confident) who’s just off work and with pay. Will she call for one of them or . . . ?
“The Gilded Six-Bits” are the coins that lure Missie May (Deidre, conflicted) from her loving husband. Otis from Chicago flirts persuasively. Earley does a great job of holding a curtain before Missie May so she can bathe or don clothes, just as he brings a tree into her yard or helps set up an Ice Cream Parlor. Deidre shows her newborn son to husband Joe (Yohance, persuasive). He shows her all that glitters is not gold “And the Sun goes Down” on a redeemed marriage.
Though it may take some minutes to get used to the vocabulary, we find that worthwhile. It’s not too difficult to fathom meanings because of Guitar Man and Blues Speak Woman’s explanations, along with the other actors’ miming. Director Jim Weaver has assured that every word is heard and every movement precisely choreographed and executed. He gets the right emotions from his actors, too.
Praise goes to the simple but effective set by Steve Patmagrian. He gets more out of two large printed boards, with edges that contain props, than most designers do with a plethora of furnishings, elaborate backdrops, and myriad projections. We find this simplicity also appealing in the appropriate costuming of the main personae, contrasted with the Harlem costumes and the elaborate clothing on less-likeable characters.
It’s doubtful we’ll see a better Spunk regionally or even off-Broadway.
