For Colored Girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf
Written by: Ntozake Shange
Directed by: Quentin Talley
A SASSY MINT RAINBOW
By Perry Tannenbaum
If you saw the crowd at Levine Museum on MLK Day swelling out onto
7th Street , you may already know that the overflow queue was for
"Q" – Quentin Talley and his new On Q Productions. With a free
presentation of Douglas T. Ward's A Day of Absence, a new day was
born in the Queen City . Crowd control may have been a
work-in-progress, but the concept was an instant hit.
who have...
Talley's success was underscored last weekend when he had to add an
extra Sunday matinee to the run of his latest exploit, For Colored
Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. This was out
in Commuterland, far from the mighty Lynx, at the Mint Museum --
proving that the Q concept has legs and his followers have wheels.
considered suicide...
For a Thursday evening miles from the launching pad of ACC March
Madness, it was a fairly healthy walk for Sue and me from the Mint
parking lot to the lobby. A good 20 minutes before the 8 p.m. start,
only scattered seats remained. When a horseshoe of extra seats was
plunked right in front of our front row, we scrambled forward to
protect our sightline.
when the rainbow ...
The On Q cast seemed admirably oblivious to this constriction of
their performing space. While the candy-colored costumes and
lighting made them look like girls as they descended to the stage,
their celebration of Ntozake Shange's text -- spiced with extended
interludes of sass, seduction and brutal melodrama -- clearly made
the point that these were ladies, each one of them a handful.
is enuf.
In fact, the maturity of the actresses and the silken design and
production values were what elevated this Colored Girls above the
pathfinding JC Smith production of 1988. Talley had his own way with
the script, dropping an innocent 11-year-old rainbow, Zelyn Valdes,
into the vortex of mature colored girls who swirled around her. Leah
Palmer-Licht as Lady in Purple was the most wanton of our urban
griots, unwinding the various escapades of "Sechita." LeShea Stukes
certainly was the most emotional as Lady in Red, relating the
sensational tale of the deranged father in "No Air."
Anysia Welsh was suitably juvenile and coquettish as Lady in Brown,
spinning the "Toussaint" reminiscence, while Zorana Valdes widened
the overall palette as Lady in Orange , celebrating salsa and Willie
Colon. Somebody had to pick up the short straw and portray the
virginal Lady in Yellow of "Graduation Night," and Winthrop grad
Kimberly Johnson excelled in her Charlotte debut.
Janalyn Moonie-Walton and Regina Davis, as Ladies in Blue and Green,
added zest to the incantatory choreopoems. Moonie-Walton, memorable
on film in brother Jeff's Donor documentary, brought a cynical edge
to "Then I Moved to Harlem," while Davis perfectly calibrated her
outraged attitude for "Somebody Almost Walked Off With My Stuff."
There's an On Q original scheduled on April 19 at Duke Power
Theater, Miles & Coltrane: Blue(.). On the strength of For Colored
Girls, I'm predicting it will be a tough ticket -- even if it isn't
free.
CIAA Special Dates!!
On Febraury 25th & 26th @ 6pm at the Mint Museum.
tickets are 20 US Dollars
gallery:
