[NEohioPAL] Review of CPH's "Malhalia: A Gospel Musical"

[Bob Abelman]

Music, star are great, but story of gospel singer falls flat at CPH

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review appeared in the News-Herald 2/13/09

 

 

Like a man attending Menopause: The Musical, there's something amiss if you are not black and Baptist at the Cleveland Play House production of Mahalia: A Gospel Musical.  

 

This biographical musical tells the story of the incredible Mahalia Jackson, the queen of gospel music.  It follows her journey from God's calling to spread the gospel through song in the 1920s, to her obtaining notoriety and wealth in Chicago, New York and Europe, to her provision of musical inspiration during the civil rights movement.   

 

This is an important life and an influential career.  It's just not a great story as told by playwright Tom Stolz or staged by director Kent Gash at the CPH.  Mahalia: A Gospel Musical lacks intimacy, insight and activity.

 

The play depicts a woman with no existence outside of her music and her love of God, ignoring facts like Mahalia's marriage and divorce.  Every moment in the play is informed by the artist's belief that she is doing the lord's work, which leaves little room for drama of any kind.  Nothing happens in this play except a series of monumental moments-an appearance at Carnegie Hall, singing at Kennedy's inauguration, standing at the side of Martin Luther King Jr.-connected by very little exposition and bits of forced dialogue between Mahalia and a handful of simply drawn family members and colleagues.  

 

Gash and his creative team don't help.  They tell this tale on an empty, cavernous stage with a backdrop of stained glass windows, a roll-on piano and a few chairs.   The entire civil rights movement is reduced to a handful of larger-than-life photographs projected in the background.  The one advantage to this minimalist presentation of Stolz's bare-boned play is that it places full focus on Jackson's music.   

 

In fact, the only thing this play has going for it is the music and the woman singing it.  Broadway star Natasha Yvette Williams is a marvelous Mahalia.  She somehow manages to create an accessible and likable character out of what she is given and is blessed with an amazing set of pipes to do justice to the Negro spirituals and gospel songs that comprise Mahalia's extensive catalogue.

 

Twenty-four songs are sung in this production, directed by JMichael and accompanied on the organ by Edward Ridley Jr.  CPH's Bolton Theatre stage is more akin to a concert hall or revivalist meeting room than a theater.  Audience members likely will be as confused as the attendees at the opening-night performance.  They were not sure whether to sit passively and quietly and embrace traditional theater etiquette or call back to the performers, stand in the aisles and sing along as if in a place of worship.   

 

Clearly, the folks in the aisles were having the most fun.  The rest appeared to be outsiders looking in, lacking the culture, upbringing and experience instrumental in having a full and rich understanding and appreciation of the music and its inspiration.  Like a gentile at the National Yiddish Theatre production of Shpiel!  Shpiel! Shpiel!, they got it, but not all of it.

!

Come to Mahalia: A Gospel Musical for the music, not for the drama.

 

Come for Williams' performance, not the play that surrounds it.

 

Come ready to stand and shout.

 

And maybe bring a Baptist.

 

Mahalia: A Gospel Musical continues through February 22 in The Cleveland Play House's Bolton Theatre.  For tickets, which range from $42 to $64 ($10 students), call (216) 795-7000 or visit www.clevelandplayhouse.com.
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