Playwright: Pearl Cleage. At: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave, Tickets: $48-$68. Runs through: Feb. 12
Oh, how we adore the romance associated with young people rejecting shallow materialistic imperatives to pursue a selfless lifestyle devoted to art, ideals and adventure—and since nothing is more romantic than the untimely death of the innocence sustaining their starry-eyed vision of a better world, chronicles thereof are required to end in tragedy, after the delicate blossoms of Haight-Ashbury have wilted, the studios of the East Village have fallen to gentrification and a single teabag with five cups of hot water is insufficient sustenance.
In adherence with this principle, Pauline Cleage's microcosmic tale of la vie boheme is set in the epoch dubbed by historians "The Harlem Renaissance"—not in its full flower, when fashionable society flocked to the Manhattan enclave to celebrate African-American arts and culture, but in 1930, at the start of the Great Depression.
Its unhappy demise is not readily apparent. Despite the increasing scarcity of jobs and money, dressmaker Guy and chanteuse Angel have not abandoned the ambitions spurring their flight from the deep south to seek their fortunes in the urban environment of New York City. Guy aspires to resettle in gay-tolerant Paris as the personal tailor of superstar Josephine Baker, while Angel longs to headline her own nightclub act. Frequent visitors to their brownstone apartment include bookish reproductive-rights activist Delia and the hard-working ( and hard-partying ) Dr. Sam. The arrival of Alabama country boy Leland offers Angel the security she craves, but only if she is willing to renounce her free-thinking friends and the nurturing community they share.
Court Theatre's production of this rarely performed play spares no effort in realizing Cleage's scrupulously researched and richly textured portrait of a milieu invoked by casual references to such luminaries as Langston Hughes, Margaret Sanger, Marcus Garvey, the Abyssinian Baptist Church and its pastor, the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr. Through such intimacy-enhancing devices as scenic designer Linda Buchanan's transparent walls—which permit us to witness characters in their solitary moments—and director Ron OJ Parson's locating the building's exterior in the audience area ( our first sight of Guy and Angel is of the former staggering down the aisle burdened by the noisily drunk latter ), our affection for these joyful pilgrims reveling in their youth and resilience is ensured.
That assurance happens before we hear them express their passions in repartee so eloquent that we lament the absence of a libretto allowing us to take home part of an experience likely to linger in our memories for weeks, or maybe years.
