‘BLACK WOMAN SPEAKS’--ELOQUENTLY

Beah Richards’ one-woman “A Black Woman Speaks,” at the Inner City Cultural Center, is a paean to womanhood of all colors. It’s alternately funny, wise, affecting, stinging.

Richards first performed the show at the ICCC 13 years ago. This production is more tightly structured, more luminous, and more timely than it was at its opening here in 1974. Director C. Bernard Jackson also has a star who never betrays a sign of self-indulgence.

There’s less anger in the performance now, but the pride, intensity and searing wounds are burnished as ever.

Love (of the dove and of the serpent), not race, is the subject at hand. In 10 short pieces, Richards explores the role of “the woman Black--the lady White.” In the title piece, she tells white womanhood how male supremacists have trapped both races of women: “...If they counted my teeth/they did appraise your thigh...cuddled down in your pink slavery...”

Richards’ anger falls on the role of Western woman as defined “within the image of the virgin: that purity and that whiteness of her state of grace are a fundamental arm of the divine right of white to rule.”

Richards also includes a hilarious replay of an audition she did for a Shakespeare play at the Globe Playhouse in San Diego in the late ‘50s, “before black was beautiful.”

This woman can speak.

Visually, the show is enhanced by Richards’ radiance (and a dramatic costume change), set designer Virgil Woodfork’s blend of African imagery and Grecian columns, and lighting designer Leroy Meadows’ coppery hues. Two uncredited percussionists lend a subtle rhythmic touch.

The show’s single flaw is the intrusion of three songs delivered by singer Mel Carter. (The music and lyrics are by director Jackson with song titles taken from Richards’ book, “A Black Woman Speaks”). The vocals are unnecessary and a bit show bizzy. Even Carter’s tux seems out of place.

Performances at 1308 S. New Hampshire Ave., 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday, 3 p.m., Sunday, through Feb. 28; (213) 387-1161.