Actress drinks deep of a role; 1969 play's questions endure

As 30-year-old Tommy, in ACT Theatre's revival of the Alice Childress play "Wine in the Wilderness," actress April Yvette Thompson is vibrantly alive — from the tip of her synthetic wig to the soles of her sneakers.

This feisty urban survivor has just lost her home and most of her meager possessions in a 1964 race riot that burned through a large swath of Harlem. But her joie de vivre is undiminished.

When more educated, polished Harlem residents "adopt" Tommy during the riot, bringing her to a handsome artist who wants to paint her portrait, the woman's sassy wit and joyful curiosity light up the party.

Tommy is the heart and soul of this 1969 play by the late Childress, who often raised thorny, prescient questions of race, class and gender in her dramatic and prose works.

"Wine in the Wilderness," the first production of ACT's new Hansberry Project, is no exception. In fact, this 75-minute one-act loads up its social concerns with such didactic fervor, and resolves them so neatly, it feels quite dated in form — though not in substance.

The play's rhetorical streak is assuaged somewhat by the stinging candor of the still-relevant questions it raises about male-female relations and cultural tensions within the black community.

But Valerie Curtis-Newton's well-wrought staging profits most from Thompson's sharp yet luminous portrayal of a gal who refuses to be "sold cheap."

Harlem painter Bill (Shanga Parker) at first arrogantly views Tommy only in symbolic terms, as a "crude, coarse" female embodiment of the black underclass. When his friends Sonny-Man (Anthony Leroy Fuller) and Cynthia (Lakeetra Knowles) befriend her, they think she'd be a perfect model for "Wine in the Wilderness," Bill's triptych painting of idealized black womanhood.

Bill has already painted the two other portraits in the three-panel work: one of an innocent child; the other of a highly romanticized African empress who, in his view, "has it all" — beauty, dignity and submissiveness to her man.

Tommy's gritty humor, brashness and mismatched clothes amuse Bill and his friends. But it is her intrinsic, unjaded sweetness that touches Oldtimer (William Hall Jr.), a tippling Harlem codger who is also at this impromptu party.

Though resistant at first, Bill is ultimately charmed by Tommy too. And he realizes that despite her lack of education, she's one smart cookie.

Yet it's inevitable in this setup that Tommy will discover Bill's initial intention to make her a poster girl for the rude and crude. Unfortunately, with that revelation the script swings into lecture mode, with proclamations on black pride and male chauvinism replacing an organic study of human behavior.

The happy ending also feels schematic, smoothing over many rough edges in this relationship too tidily. Perhaps it would ring truer if we saw in Parker's performance more of the transitions Bill undergoes, from arrogant chauvinist to consciousness-raised lover.

No complaints though, about the performance by Knowles, as the poised and privileged-but-troubled Cynthia, and by Hall, whose lived-in Oldtimer never has a false moment.

Kudos also to Dominic CodyKramers for a sound design (with bits of Martin Luther King Jr. speeches, Motown hits, et al) that anchors us in the turbulent '60s; and to scenic designer Matthew Smucker, whose messy artist's crib is rich in telling detail, right down to the brick-and-board bookshelves.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com