REVIEW: CenterStage's 'Crumbs' a Joyous Bounty

What a week it has been for Baltimore/>/> area theatre!  First, the brilliant Adding Machine at Towson/> University/>, then the tour-de-force performance of Valerie Harper in Golda's Balcony, and now the warm, beautiful and delightfully funny Crumbs from the Table of Joy, which opened last night at Baltimore/>/>'s famed CenterStage.

 

The first play from playwright Lynn Nottage (Intimate Apparel), this dramedy concerns the Crump family who, after tragically losing their mother, has moved from country living in Florida/> to big city living in Brooklyn/>, circa 1950.  As the father comes to grips with having to raise two teenage daughters alone, his wife's flamboyant, thought-to-be Communist sister comes to lend a hand, causing havoc in the already delicate balance of the household.  Fed up, the father leaves, only to return with a White wife in tow!  The effect of Communist rumors and interracial marriage on this innocent Black family creates both high comedy and thought-provoking drama, woven together in a rich tapestry, both specific to its time and relevant to today's multi-generational audience.  The memory play, told from the point of view of 17 year-old Ernestine, is a balanced equation of Neil Simon's Lost In Yonkers plus Brighton Beach Memoirs plus Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun plus a dash of August Wilson minus the heavy-handed didactics plays that cover this territory usually have.  The result is two of the fastest, funniest hours of theatre in ages.

CenterStage has again assembled a top-of-the-line creative staff, helmed by director David Schweizer, who has crafted a fun, tightly focused, highly theatrical production.  His use of space and brisk pacing leave one marveling at the visuals and breathless with anticipation for what will next unfold.  He has creatively staged the piece so that all points of view are available to the audience at once, with easily moveable furniture and a variety of stage areas allowing the enrapt audience to keep track of the entire family at once.  Scenic designer James Noone has created a beautiful set - the golden framework of movie palaces past, in pieces and arranged to suggest they are no longer as one, as well as an upstage screen that functions as a foggy suggestion of the big screen create the background while the main stage area is populated with set pieces that suggest the cramped, lower middle class trappings of a basement apartment.  In what has become a mini-trend in local stage design, the entire center of the stage is a vast pit at times, effectively used here to separate the characters at key points in the narrative.  At other times, the floor rises to provide a variety of locales - a movie theatre, a table at a meeting hall dinner, the seats of a train.  Each time the floor rises, one never knows what one will see, providing a running joke of sorts, but also a sense of anticipation and surprise.  Hanging purposefully between audience and cast are two giant movie projectors, thus reminding all involved that we are watching life through many filters, not the least of which is the narrator, a cineaste and romantic, whose dreams of what she wished had happened occasionally, and to great comic and dramatic effect, are sometimes interpolated onto the story as she tells it.  The lighting (Alexander Nichols), sound (Mark Bennett) and costumes (David Burdick) finish the tapestry with visual and aural richness of mood and place.

Last night, a star was born.  Amina S. Robinson as Ernestine, our narrator, took the stage and demanded our attention, sympathy and empathy as she guided the audience through a tour of her young life.  Known to Baltimore/>/> audiences as the urchin with scene-stealing presence in the tour of Little Shop of Horrors, which played the Hippodrome last season, Ms. Robinson has come into her own as a leading actress to be reckoned with.  She is a delightful comic actress, both in delivery and physically, all the while infusing her performance with a subtle, but potent, undercurrent of pathos.  Her pain, frustration and fears are never too far from the surface, so that we can really feel for and understand what is going on in the head of a young woman taught to keep her tongue and thoughts in check.  And she does all of this with a rare economy - every movement, pause, inflection has been carefully assembled into a seamless, brilliant performance. 

The four actors who comprise the rest of the ensemble are also quite remarkable, and perfectly cast.  Kelly Taffe, as hard-drinking, hard-loving, hard-thinking Aunt Lily comes on like gangbusters, and teeters on brink of over the top until that moment when she finally takes a breath and we see some of the cracks in the veneer she holds up.  At turns hilarious and heart-breaking, Ms. Taffe's performance firmly sets up one corner of a power triangle, as the adults scramble to assert their place in the family dynamic.  Another pillar of strength in this struggle is Gerte, the new German, White step-mother to the girls.  The opposite of Aunt Lily, Gerte comes to this table a vulnerable, sad soul with all of her strengths in hiding.  Played skillfully by Patricia Ageheim, she more than holds her own in a house full of strong women.  This performance is a wonderful balance of humor (particularly in 2 brief fantasy sequences), warmth and quiet strength, much like the play itself.  The third, and weakest (by design, not in quality) of the triumvirate is Godfrey Crump, played with loud desperation and quiet survivor's guilt by Leland Gantt.  His performance, again by design, is the least theatrical, as the character demands an almost frustrating practicality, and an endearing dignity.  Godfrey is deeply entrenched in his role of provider, and resents (but clearly needs) outside help in raising his daughters, who are rapidly approaching a phase in life he is ill-prepared to deal with.  Gantt hurls himself into a role that requires that he be devout to a mail-order evangelist, and whose one stab at impracticality - his marriage to a white German woman, close to the end of WWII - brings about consequences he is even less, at least on the surface, prepared to deal with.  Finally, in an absolutely hilarious and often touching role, Edwina Findley as Ernestine's sister Ermina is a tornado of energy, eating up everything in her path.  Her love and hero-worship of her sister adds a level of warmth, which in turn lends a heart-breaking sadness to the scene where Ermina finally cracks under the pressure of family issues, and finally, triumphantly, if not a little shakily, finds her own voice.

A play dense with ideas, ideals, and a touching dose of idealism, this table is full of joy, even as we are witness to the frantic scramble each character goes through just to grab a few of the crumbs that life has thrown them.  Beautifully, those crumbs makes each, and the audience watching them, a better whole.  And like a delicious crumb, we are thankful for the taste.

PHOTO: Amina S. Robinson (L) and Edwina Findley (R) in the CenterStage production of Lynn Nottage's Crumbs from the Table of Joy.  Courtesy of CenterStage.

 

 

 

 

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