Clever idea for a play . . . on paper. Putting it up on its feet was another matter. That’s my verdict on Black Super Hero Magic Mama, Inda Craig-Galvan’s comic-strip-influenced dramedy which is now running at The Geffen, directed by Robert O’Hara. Craig-Galvan, a TV writer (“The Rookie”), was motivated to write her play by the ongoing tragedy of police violence in the USA: trigger-happy white cops shooting down unarmed and innocent black boys. In Black Super Hero, the 14-year old victim is Tramarion Jackson (Cedric Joe), a personable, multi-talented high school student (he excels at both sports and academics). He becomes yet another statistic when a local white cop, Dave Lester (Walter Belenky), over-reacts when he sees a black man (Daryl C. Brown) struggling to open the door of his van. Assuming the worst—that the vehicle is being jacked—Lester pulls his pistol and orders the man to freeze. When the latter explains that he’s a high-school basketball coach and well-known in the community, the cop simply ignores his words and continues to rant, telling the coach and Tramarion (one of his players) to put up their hands. Both obey, but Tramarion has the misfortune to be holding the trophy his team has just won. Lester mistakes it for a gun and starts emptying his weapon at him. The rest of Black Super Hero deals with the reaction of Tramarion’s mother, Sabrina (Kimberly Hebert Gregory), to the murder of her son. With the media milking and exploiting the shooting—Keven Douglas and Reiko Aylesworth excel as smarmy TV reporters—Sabrina first turns her rage inward and suffers from a deep, debilitating depression. Her sister Lena (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams) tries to help by urging her to fight back in public against police brutality, but Sabrina ultimately has other ideas. She will honor her late son by entering into the fantasy world he created with his pal Flat Joe (Noah Abbott). Together they had started to write and draw a comic book called “The Masai Avenger” whose black super-hero would avenge all the wrongs done to his people. In a shazaam! moment Sabrina is transformed into The Masai Avenger and, with sword in hand, goes out to do battle against her race’s enemies—essentially almost all the characters from Act One, now doing double duty as comic-book baddies. Karen Perry’s costumes are a hoot and Yee Eun Nam’s psychedelic projection designs are wondrous, but The Masai Avenger’s duels with hyenas and jackals in human form are disappointingly dull and unfunny. The thud you hear is that of a misconceived play falling hard on its face.
