STAGE REVIEW : ENTERTAINMENT WITH SUBTLE MESSAGE

The premise of “Movin’ On”--an exuberantly staged, briskly paced revue that is a tribute to famed black performers is chiefly to entertain, not to edify.

And entertain it does. The show offers 90 minutes of high-energy song and dance from the ribald to the melancholy that evoke the eras of such stars as Fats Waller, Paul Robeson and Bert Williams and such works as “Porgy and Bess” and the very recent “Dreamgirls.”

It’s all done with a great deal of affection, charm and aplomb by a nonprofessional cast of members from the Inter-Cultural Committee for the Performing Arts, an Orange County-based black troupe, and from a Rancho Santiago College theater workshop.

But the performance Wednesday night at Phillips Hall on the Santa Ana campus--given as part of the college’s first annual Fine Arts Festival--has its sociological message, too, no matter how understated and kept largely between the lines.

The message is not an unfamiliar one, but hardly less pertinent today: The white society that lavished such praise on these black entertainers also kept them in subservient status on and off the stage. The vast talents of these performers were not denied--only their humanness.

In its scene-setting narration, “Movin’ On” cites the tragic case of Williams, the great Broadway comedian who was a Ziegfeld Follies star in the early 1920s but who was allowed into the New York hotels by back doors and freight elevators.

In its various editions since its 1981 debut in Santa Ana, “Movin’ On” has dealt with other legendary artists, such as Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters and Billie Holiday, who were also treated by whites with on-stage adulation but--as a matter of routine--with off-stage humiliations.

The revue, written and directed by Adleane Hunter and based on a concept by Jeannine Ford, has been performed at local schools and municipal auditoriums. Last July, it was one of three U.S. productions staged at the International Community Theatre Festival in Los Angeles.

The Rancho Santiago College version includes 10 members from the original Inter-Cultural Committee cast, plus another 18 taken from the workshop Hunter and others conducted for the college’s Theatre Practicum program.

Not all of the revue’s 23 numbers jell or are devoid of a certain awkwardness in performances. But overall, Hunter’s production has a sure structural cohesiveness to it and a successful interweaving of the comic and the dramatic.

The production has other assets: music accompaniment (a six-member group led by pianist Richard Abraham) that has driving, stylish verve; choreography (by Daryl Copeland and assisted by Ford) that is both lyrical and delightfully vibrant, and narration that is delivered with smooth expertise by Michelle Caldwell. And the nonprofessional cast, despite varying levels of skill, carries off the show with an infectious enthusiasm.

In the Fats Waller tribute (which includes “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ”), Marcille Block, Charles Moore, Anita Hill, Debra Ebert and Wendell Washington make a crackling good group. Another standout is Darlene Griffin as Dorothy in a segment from “The Wiz.”

The “Summertime” number, sung by Ebert and danced by Trysh Jefferson (to a bluesy saxophone solo by Abraham) has a fine sensuous grace about it. The full-ensemble numbers from “The Wiz,” “Purlie” and particularly the black-pride songs from “‘Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” are sung and danced with a joyous, evangelistic intensity.

However, the underscoring of the racism theme is done quietly, almost gently, as in the “Nobody” number--the old Williams lament that Washington re-creates in a skillfully underplayed, richly evocative performance.

Although Williams, a legendary pantomimist, is seen as a sublime performer, he is also seen as a black star of his times. His stage persona is reduced to the white society’s cruel stereotype--the shuffling Negro. And the Williams figure--his face covered with the burnt-cork makeup that was the mandate of that musical-comedy era for any “black” characterizations--is further diminished: a black man in blackface.

The lingering, unsettling message of “Movin’ On” is that the Williams era may not be that long ago.