REACHING FOR SALVATION IN SEARCH OF GOD
Joy and despair mix in epic Afro-Canadian tale
The last time Lucinda Davis appeared at the Centaur, she was playing God herself in The Book of Bob, a variation on the story of the tribulations of Job. This time around, she’s playing the Job figure as a young Ontarian woman, Rainey, who hits the stage howling, lifting up her dying baby to the seemingly indifferent heavens.
Bereaved, Rainey develops a compulsion to eat dirt, gives up on a successful medical career and dedicates herself to wrestling with the big questions about God and suffering — of which there’s more for our heroine, as she learns that her beloved father has only days to live.
If all this makes The Adventures of a Black Girl In Search of God sound like a right old misery fest, you might be surprised to learn that Djanet Sears’s epic play — first produced by her own Obsidian Theatre company in 2002, and now being co-produced by Centaur, Black Theatre Workshop and Ottawa’s National Arts Centre — is an often joyous affair, bursting with soulful a cappella song and willowy choreography from its 22-strong cast, and with a strand of comedy straight out of the silliest Hollywood heist caper.
This last aspect is particularly surprising, given that it centres on the indignities that Afro-Canadians have had to endure ever since a number of them escaped from U.S. slave-owning states through Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad.
Rainey’s father, Abendigo (played with twinkly charm and occasional fiery zeal by Walter Borden), is the ringleader of a lovable bunch of septuagenarian desperadoes who call themselves the Lotsa Soap Company. Their mission? To liberate demeaning symbols of casual racism, which might include lawn jockeys, grinning busts, even the smiling old lady on pancake mix packets. More seriously, they’re engaged in a campaign to retain the historical name of a nearby river, Negro Creek, which the authorities want to change for politically correct reasons. (It was named in honour of a black regiment that fought valiantly in the War of 1812.)
The title comes from a littleknown short story from George Bernard Shaw, and early on there’s a touch of Shavian cut and thrust as Rainey and her estranged pastor husband Michael (Quincy Amorer) clash over theology and harsh reality. But the Governor General Award-winning Sears, who also directs, with assistance from BTW’s Mike Payette (he previously directed Sears’s Harlem Duet at the Segal Centre), is aiming at something a lot more sensuous, certainly a lot less intellectually flinty. Much of the often-intoxicating impact of her play comes from the inclusion of a chorus of ancestors — in Vivine Scarlett’s choreography, they constantly and sinuously flow across the stage to perform scene changes, and sometimes enact the scenery themselves, most notably the undulating waters of Negro Creek. They also provide a continual and beautifully uplifting soundscape of gospel and traditional African song.
The trouble is that this impressive formal aspect of the play tends to overwhelm the dramatic content which, despite the weighty issues, is surprisingly thin. Although put through the emotional wringer, Rainey comes over as pretty much a passive and reactive character rather than one who is on an obsessive
search for some mighty truth, and the usually excellent Davis is only occasionally given the opportunity to shine. And as gently amusing as the Lotsa Soap gang comic business is, much of it amounts to old clichés trotted out to get easy laughs (the old whiskey-snuck-into-the-sick-room routine being perhaps the most familiar example).
Kudos to Sears for hitting on such a bold theatrical approach, which really does provide some unforgettable moments — up there is the defiant gospel hymn led by a scalp-tingling Jackie Richardson after the desecration of Michael’s church. But it’s an approach that ultimately feels as though it’s in search of stronger dramatic material.