Review: ANGRY, RAUCOUS AND SHAMELESSLY GORGEOUS at Geffen Playhouse

Produced in association with the Black Rebirth Collective, Pearl Cleage’s ANGRY, RAUCOUS AND SHAMELESSLY GORGEOUS, now at The Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, is a timely and timeless meditation on aging, ageism, and aging out, especially for women, especially-especially for Black women. With complex characterizations, whip-smart dialogue, and vibrant, shrewd performances, the four women at the center of the show are alive from the second the lights go up.

Charlayne Woodard plays Anna Campbell, an actress in her 60s whose heyday came years before with a piece of performance art in which she protested the silencing of Black females by performing monologues from August Wilson plays—in the buff. Having spent significant time as an expatriate in Amsterdam, she has returned to her hometown of Atlanta to perform “Naked Wilson” as the opening act of a women’s theater festival—or so she thinks. When she finds out from the festival’s promoter, Kate Hughes (Deborah Joy Winans), she’s been invited simply as a guest and that her piece will be performed by Precious “Pete” Watson (Olivia Washington), whose only experience has been in burlesque and porn, sparks fly and Anna is forced to confront the past, the present, and her future.

Director LaTanya Richardson Jackson nimbly moves things in a breezy fashion without sacrificing emotional heft. The set design by Beowulf Boritt is exquisite with nonstop rain adding a sad and almost ominous undertone to the story, and the visuals by projection designer Hana S. Kim are stunning. The costumes by Emilio Sosa are fantastic, giving nuance and depth to the characters.

Washington’s Pete is smart, seeing things the older adults don’t, offering a fresh perspective to her elders. She’s a sparkling presence. Woodard is the centerpiece of the show, however, her Anna a fading star who doesn’t want to go quietly into her good night and thusly refusing to pass the tiara, a diva who knows her power is still formidable. She’s imperious without resorting to arrogance. Well, not too much arrogance. While her older manager, Betty (Denise Burse), strives to get Anna to see the reality of, well, reality, Anna laments how time marches on and the young overtake the older, especially in a setting as vicious as show business in which women under the age of 40 often start a slippery slope of plastic surgery that ends up making them look older than they are. How to age gracefully in the public eye?

Cleage explores that theme in sometimes meditative, sometimes laugh-out-loud, sometimes surprising ways, with each woman bringing her own outlook. Added to that is the argument that art is (or can be) activism, but does sex work count as art? Or activism? And why or why not? And who decides what stories are told, let alone remembered? Black women have been in the back seat for far too long, and Cleage and her four characters are ready to take the wheel.

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