Sunday, November 09, 2008 | A+E, Theater, Reviews
Rainbow connections

Despite some missteps, gay-centric ‘New Century’ delights

Coosa Valley Photography
LaLa Cochran, Stan Gentry and Don Finney in “The New Century”

“THE NEW CENTURY”
Actor’s Express
404-607-7469
www.actors-express.com
Through Nov. 22

BY BERT OSBORNE
 
With a quick-witted script by Paul Rudnick, under the sharp direction of Alan Kilpatrick, and featuring three of Atlanta’s finest acting talents (LaLa Cochran, Don Finney and Shelly McCook), what isn’t to like about the Actor’s Express production of “The New Century”? What begins as three keenly observed, seemingly unrelated scenes ultimately defies all logic by bringing the various characters together in a hospital maternity ward, but in large part the show delights.
 
Cochran opens with “Pride and Joy,” as a New York Jewish mother. Her daughter is a lesbian, one son has been sexually reassigned, and the other’s a “leather slave” into “scatology” (don’t ask)—which makes her a perfect choice to address the latest PLGBTQCCCO meeting (Parents of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, the Transgendered, the Questioning, the Curious, the Creatively Concerned and Others). Although she’s no less capable than her co-stars, and despite the wig and glasses, Cochran strains credibility somewhat as a woman who’s about to be a grandmother, and her dialect is spotty (an “oy” here, a “noivous” there). The bigger drawback to her monologue is that it lacks the poignant undercurrent that distinguishes the rest of Rudnick’s comedy.
 
In “Mr. Charles,” Finney plays to the hilt another of his familiar queens, this one the host of a late-night Florida cable-access program called “Too Gay.” Indeed. With his orange hairpiece, heavy eye makeup, frilly scarf, shrill voice and girlie hand gestures, he’s the very model of “shebonics.” Subtlety has never been Finney’s calling card—here, he’s most entertaining answering his viewer mail, and depicting the complete history of gay theater in a spry 60 seconds (right down to the “gratuitous male frontal nudity,” courtesy of Stan Gentry as a retro Keanu Reeves-ian boy toy)—but damn if Finney can’t angle his head in such a way that his tears glisten at just the right time.
 
“Crafty” casts the brilliant McCook as a Midwesterner whose love of arts and crafts, scrapbooking and cake-baking competitions offers an outlet for “self-expression” in an otherwise lonely life. An inferior actress might have gone for easy laughs—or cheap sentiment, when talk turns to 9/11 or the loss of her only son to AIDS—but McCook is virtually peerless in her ability to portray quirky, ordinary (and not always overly intellectual) people without any trace of condescension. You still may not buy how her path comes to cross those of Cochran and Finney, but to hear McCook tell of designing a patch for the AIDS memorial quilt is pure bliss. SP
 

DULY NOTED:

 Were it simply about an innocent black man wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 1940s Louisiana, director Jill Jane Clements’ reverential Theatrical Outfit staging of “A Lesson Before Dying” could subsist on the strength and sensitivity of actor Eric Little’s excellent work. The real “hero” is an embittered teacher—begrudgingly enlisted to counsel him, and allegedly enlightened by the experience—but Johnell Easter is ineffectual and reticent in the role, both in setting up the personal conflicts and in portraying the emotional payoffs. The prisoner’s fate is truly tragic, while the teacher’s transformation feels bogus. 678-528-1500. www.theatricaloutfit.org. Through Nov. 23.
 
Darrell Wofford is the man of the moment in Onstage Atlanta’s “The Weir” (directed by Barry West), about a group of drinking buddies and their ghost stories. Not only did he design the nice set (a rustic, rough-hewn Irish pub), the actor also gives a performance that singularly elevates the show (replete with a believable brogue). The other alternating narrators are too weakly drawn for their tales to be very gripping or spooky. The best segment is steeped in realism rather than “folklore,” with Wofford “relishing the details” of an unhappy romance—and the kindness of a stranger. 404-897-1802. www.onstageatlanta.com. Through Nov. 22.