DATE: Thursday, June 5, 1997                TAG: 9706040143

SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS         PAGE: 16   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: THEATER REVIEW  

SOURCE: Montague Gammon III 

                                            LENGTH:   73 lines

``STY OF BLIND PIG'' DESERVES BETTER ATTENDANCE

The fledgling ZWG Repertory Theatre has taken a big step toward artistic maturity in its current production, ``The Sty of the Blind Pig.'' The play is full of admirable writing and well-drawn characters, the production presents plenty of good acting, and lots of people could feel rewarded for their attendance at the small storefront playhouse.

It's such a shame that Saturday night's show played to just four adults and one child. The players deserve better, and for that matter, so do the audiences who would delight in this uplifting tale of strong African-American women and the men who touch their lives.

Churchgoing Weedy Warren and her 30-ish daughter, Alberta, live in a small Chicago apartment. Alberta supports both of them by working as a domestic for a well-to-do, and one assumes white, family.

The well-intentioned Weedy has aged to the point where her protective crustiness has ossified into a nature that is downright contrary. Her brother, the 60-year-old Uncle Doc, drops by now and again to sponge money and deplete Alberta's liquor supply.

Into their lives comes a young man named Blind Jordan, who describes himself as a ``blind street singer.'' Alberta falls for him, and he triggers a mixture of comic and tragic events that turn the family's existence topsy-turvy.

Author Phillip Hayes Dean displays a remarkable ear for believable dialogue, which he blends with an almost poetic sense of rhythm. The performers, especially Beverly Fernandez as Weedy, have a knack for sailing upon their speeches in luxuriant, sweeping waves.

Dean's skill with dialogue is twinned with his ability to create well drawn, interesting characters who do not become stereotypes, though their personalities are more than passingly familiar.

Alberta, as played by Tonette Choate Wilder, comes across as a very real young woman with an admirable, perhaps compulsive sense of loyalty. Paul Parker, in the role of Blind Jordan, seems appropriately non-threatening for much of his time on stage, though he might conjure up a bit more intensity as the play nears its end.

The play takes its title from the name of a New Orleans house of ill repute in which Jordan and his blind father before him were both born, and it is the revelations of his violent, tawdry past that bring the play to its climax.

James Allmond's experience in local theater reaches back quite a few years. Though he's a couple of decades short of Doc Jordan's age, and is allowed to look too young for the part, his acting still carries almost every scene in which he appears.

The script does have the hallmarks of an early effort by a talented writer, but the talent will be of interest when the glitches of technique are forgotten.

Like many works of novice playwrights, the show is a bit long, at times even seeming to double back on itself. Some references, such as one to the ``young minister'' who has people ``all stirred up'' in Alabarra with his plan for black people to stop riding the buses, appear rather gratuitous.

Some subplots, such as Weedy's curiosity about some mysterious medication that Alberta is secretively taking, are just plain unclear. Why does Uncle Doc quote from William Faulkner's famous Nobel Prize acceptance speech? Is he someone deeper than just a charismatic roue?

Nor is the production polished on every surface, but then ZWG is still converting its Granby Street home from vacated furniture store to theater. The vitality of the players' work, and the important place in the local arts community that ZWG strives to fill, are more important than any superficial gloss. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: ``The Sty of the Blind Pig,'' by Phillip Hayes Dean

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: ZWG Repertory Theatre, 810 Granby St.

TICKETS: 627-1568

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