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‘A Song for Coretta’ @ 7 Stages
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B -
The promotional material for 7 Stages’ “A Song for Coretta” features a breath-taking image of Coretta Scott King as a young chanteuse, lost in song, wearing a ruffled satin gown that accentuates her elegant hourglass figure.
So it’s probably important to say that Atlanta playwright Pearl Cleage’s tribute to this 20th century icon is not a stage biography. Mrs. King never makes an appearance on this cold, drizzly February day. But her spirit is evoked in the lively personalities of five women waiting to view her body at the old Ebenezer Baptist Church on Auburn Avenue.
An affectionately drawn comedy with a heavy dose of last-minute pathos and political sermonizing, “A Song for Coretta” had its world premiere last year at Spelman College. As the nation pauses to remember the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, the show makes a timely comeback at the Little Five Points playhouse.
No doubt you’ll want to get in line to eavesdrop on the ladies.
Returning director Crystal Dickinson has tweaked the cast slightly to make it stronger, and created a kind of environmental staging that requires the audience to file into the theater like the mourners at Ebenezer.
Cleage, who seems preoccupied with the way the younger generation lags behind its elders in matters of social consciousness, cleverly puts the irascible and opinionated Helen (Andrea Frye) at the center of the conversation, which is sprinkled with hooty one-liners and gags. Helen is the only bystander who actually met Mrs. King, and she proudly gives a first-person account of her parents’ role in the Montgomery bus boycott.
Zora (Brynn Tucker) is the aspiring NPR journalist who interviews Helen and the others. Named after the seminal Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston, the cub reporter probably never expected to find such a goldmine of quirky characters: hilarious teenage trainwreck Keisha, aka Li’l Bit (DeAndrea Crawford); bourbon-sipping portrait painter and Katrina evacuee Mona Lisa (Marguerite Hannah); and late arrival Gwen (Bobbi Lynne Scott), an American soldier traumatized by her time in Iraq.
Clueless Li’l Bit’s issues eventually cause Helen to have a bitter, Joan Crawford-like outburst in which she attacks African-American youth as irresponsible and out of touch with the struggles of the past. “Coretta would be ashamed of you!” she blasts.
By the end of the night, the women will find hope and light in their common ground, but not before Cleage has her say on the horrors of the Iraqi war and Katrina.
Unspooling with the feeling of real-time, the virtually plotless play is nicely acted and full of delightful revelations. But its time-specific, ripped-from-the-headlines style may ultimately limit its shelf life.
Where were you when Mrs. King died? If you watched the spectacle on TV or looked at photographs in the newspaper, you observed the same images that triggered the playwright’s imagination. “A Song for Coretta” captures not just admirers of Mrs. King, but the kind of people she herself cared about: strong yet vulnerable, free yet vigilant, dutybound to pursue and protect the dream.
THE 411: Today-Feb. 17. $25. 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave., Little Five Points. 404-523-7647, 7stages.org
BOTTOM LINE: A sweet tribute to the civil rights icon — and the people she loved.
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