THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 28, 1996 TAG: 9603270092
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 20 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Theater review
SOURCE: MONTAGUE GAMMON III
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
The Norfolk State Players have discovered an engaging and rarely produced comedy by Langston Hughes called ``Simply Heavenly.''
The show is set in Harlem, apparently in the years not long after World War II. The central character is a young man named Jess B. Simple.
Simple is so luckless that when he seeks to cure his depression with a passage from Scripture, his seldom read Bible opens to the book of Job. His lodgings are so cold and his own pockets so empty, that he tries to warm himself with a burning stick of incense.
Still, he must have something going for him. Not only does a free-spirited party girl named Zarita always want his company, but he has won the love of a chaste, almost angelic young woman named Joyce. He and Joyce have been dating for five years without getting married because Simple cannot afford the legal fees to divorce a wife who long ago abandoned him.
The play follows this triangle, their friends and various patrons of a neighborhood bar for several months as this unformalized betrothal veers through its difficult course.
Last Friday, Bille D. Wilbert gave an unaffected, realistic performance as Simple. Faith J. Dukes matched him with the sense of sincerity and innocence she brought to the role of Joyce.
Wilbert carries an endearing sense of bemused persistence throughout the show. Simple isn't simple-minded, he just wonders why the world must so often be so difficult.
Keith P. McCoy plays the calm, reassuring Boyd, a pensioned war veteran and writer who rents the room next to the one in which Simple lives. The presence of a character that seems to be Hughes' alter-ego suggests that some of the other characters are drawn from life.
Like McCoy, Brad P. Breckenridge turns in a believable, natural performance. Breckenridge plays a middle-aged man named Bodiddly, who is intent upon being the life of the party wherever he happens to be.
As Zarita, Tiffany McCoy gives an energetic, sharply tuned reading of a girl whose thrill seeking hides an inner loneliness. McCoy is a young actress of special potential, able to take on a wide range of roles and play them convincingly.
The truly memorable performance on opening night came from E. Jeannelle Henderson, as the often tipsy, sex-driven, genuinely loving mother of Bodiddly's 17 children. Henderson enlivened the stage with her combination of energy, clarity and charm.
Unfortunately, judgment of that opening night was hampered by nightmarish problems with the sound amplification with which the performers and the stage had been fitted. One assumes that director Vincent I. Epps has held a few extra technical rehearsals and that the wild variations in volume, mysterious noises, and things that went bump in the silence will be cured before the second weekend of the run.
The real question becomes, why use microphones at all? Actors of all ages have been performing, and making themselves heard, in halls the size of the G.W.C. Brown Theatre for many, many generations without the help of electronic aids.
Nonetheless, ``Simply Heavenly'' remains an enjoyable comedy that would likely have been seen nowhere else but in a collegiate theater. There are moments of drama, there is plenty of humor and a tale of true love winning out over numerous obstacles is always heartening. by CNB