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Masthead
A CurtainUp Review
Milk Like Sugar
By Elyse Sommer
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. . .what else we got, better to do than feel special, for a minute, right? Tonight, tomorrow, next week, next
year. What the hell else we got?— Antwoine We supposed to be drinking real milk ‘stead we fed that powdered kind that looks like sugar—school feeds us sugar, the streets of this place feed us sugar—and we like it, we lap it up, we at the ready for it like it Vitamin D added, one hundred percent pure goodness meant to feed us stead of rot our insides out. — Annie |
Tonya Pinkins andAngela
Lewis
(Photo credit: Ari Mintz) |
The problem is that this production may be targeting the wrong audience. It's not that the story isn't a touching all too real slice of inner city life. It revolves around three attractive teenage girls in a school environment that all too often provides as little nourishment as the seeet tasting packaged milk served in its lunchroom, and without a supportive home environment stumble into premature motherhood for all the wrong reasons.
Despite the snazzy production values, fast-paced direction and strong performances — especially by Angela Lewis as Annie, the girl who has the most potential to avoid falling between the cracks — this play might be better served if mounted as an educational project. If presented to educators, student teachers and inner city community centers all over the country it could foster meaningful discussions on finding a way to prevent tragedies of go nowhere lives that could have gone somewhere instead of being passed from mother to daughter.
The play opens on the three fast-talking best friends: Annie (Angela Lewis) Talisha (Cherise Boothe) and Margie (Nikiya Mathis). The setting is a tattoo parlor where Annie is getting her first tattoo. She wants a ladybug which is also her nickname and the first of the metaphors that the playwright seems as fond off as her characters are of their texting gadgets.
Greenidge has the raw, colorful speech rhythms of these girls down so pat that many of the theater's older and more traditional audience members are likely to feel that they could use super titles as in a foreign film. But even with some missed bits of dialogue, enough emerges from the girls' conversation for the false values and neediness that propel their lives and cement their friendship to reveal themselves. After listening to them for a while, the wrong-headed pact they make is somehow as believable as it is sure to completely derail their already slim chances for escaping lives brightened only by instant gratification. The improbable life plan they concoct is a pregnancy pact which means that Talisha and Annie will join the already pregnant Margie, getting themselves pregnant in time to all sign a baby registry and have a joint baby shower.
Annie, being less sexually adventurous but otherwise much brighter and thoughtful than her friends, is not quite so gung-ho to go forward with this plan even though she's admitted that she's attracted to Malik (a sensitive, laid-back performance by J. Mallory-McCree), a bright and serious senior student. Consequently, Margie has set her up on a date with him as a birthday present. Though Malik agrees to meet Annie, their date doesn't move the three-way pregnancy plan forward. Instead it leaves Annie torn between loyalty to her friends and the yearnings stirred by Malik's studiousness and vision (Note that metaphor! Malik actually has a telescope to supply the obvious symbolism).
If Annie had a mother like Malik's who is encouraging even though seriously ill, her smart and yearning self might win out over the devil in best friends disguise. But Annie's mother Myrna (Tonya Pinkins) is too mired in her own limited life, the result of being forced to legitimize a schoolgirl pregnancy and having to work as an office cleaner. When Annie tells Myrna about the English teacher who's been clipping college brochures to some student papers her only response is "Where she gonna be when that college bill come due? College expensive. You get a good job, pay your own bills, stay on the straight and narrow. What more you need?" She does reveal a glimmer of the potential she squandered when she adds "I always did love September though. All them books you get to take home, read up" and with her scribbling stories whenever she has some spare time -- her belief that she could be a successful writer as unrealistic as the girls' belief that having babies and lots of baby gifts and up-to-date gadgets would be better than finishing school.
The scenes between Annie and the always dynamic Ms. Pinkins provide the play's dramatic highlights. With a cigarette always dangling from her lips, Pinkins' Myrna tragically underscores the too frequent reality of mothers who, instead of fighting to insure that their children don't repeat their mistakes, fan the embers of their anger and frustration into hope consuming flames.
Several other characters affect whether Annie's escaping a dead-end future: Tattoo artist Antwoine (LeRoy McClain) who inked the ladybug on her. . . another schoolmate, the born-again Keera ((Adrienne C. Moore), whose proselytizing only serves to inflame Myrna's long simmering resentment at the religious fervor that was responsible for her too early trip to the altar.
The denouement, when we see Annie's fateful decision dramatized, is staged with considerable flare. I won't tell you what it is. But don't be surprised to see that metaphoric telescope show up for the climax.
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Milk Like Sugar by Kirsten Greenidge Directed by Rebecca Taichman Cast: Cherise Boothe (Talisha), Tonya Pinkins (Myrna), Angela Lewis (Annie), LeRoy McClain (Antwoine), J. Mallory-McCree (Malik), Adrienne Moorem (Keera), Nikiya Mathis (Margie). Sets: Mimi Lien Costumes: Toni-LeslieJames Lighting: Justin Townsend Sound: Andre Pleuss Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater 416 West 42nd Street A Playwrights Horizons, Women’s Project & La Jolla Playhouse presentation. From 10/13/11; opening 11`/01/11; closing 11/20/11. Scenic design Tuesdays through Fridays at 7:30 PM, Saturdays at 2PM & 7:30 PM and Sundays at 2PM & 7PM Single tickets, $55 Reviewed by Elyse Sommer at October 29th press matinee |
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