STAGE REVIEW : A ‘Museum’ of Another Color

People didn’t want to go home after “The Colored Museum” at the Mark Taper Forum Wednesday. This is a show to talk about, fight about and drag your friends to--and not just your black friends.

Being black is what it’s about, of course--whatever that means. (Playwright George C. Wolfe doesn’t want to define it: too limiting.) But even the veriest WASP has occasionally found himself treated like a cartoon figure, to the point where he wanted to say: “Hey, this is me you’re dealing with, not my grandfather. And you got him wrong, too.”

For a century, “colored” Americans had to put up with such treatment, sometimes countering with preemptive cartoons of their own. Aunt Jemima, Dream Girl, street-smart “blood,” black yuppie: After a while it gets hard to remember who invented what. You will find all these figures in Wolfe’s museum and not on pedestals.

Why, he even dares to take a poke at “A Raisin in the Sun.” “Wipe your feet, Son.” “But, Mama, I gotta be a man.” “I know, Son. But wipe your feet first.” Lorraine Hansberry would have laughed louder than anybody, and would have been the first to see the point.

“A Raisin in the Sun” was just a play . “The Colored Museum” says that black life is bigger than anybody’s picture of it. When the picture starts impeding one’s view of the real thing, put it in the drawer. “We aren’t what we were 10 years ago. We aren’t what we were 10 minutes ago.”

But don’t throw the picture away. One of Wolfe’s mid-town types (Tommy Hollis) thinks that he can dispose of the enraged kid that he was 20 years ago (Reggie Montgomery) as easily as he can toss his old Jackson 5 LPs. No way. The dumpster lid won’t stay down.

Stash the past, don’t trash it, says “The Colored Museum.” Love it, even. Get Aunt Jemima working for you. In some ways, she was a funky old lady.

This is a show that takes contradiction and runs with it, usually with humor, often with anger, never with self-hate. (Although we’re in that area when Montgomery comes out as Miss Roj, the meanest thing in disco boots. “Baby,” says Miss Roj, peering into her glass, “if this place is the answer . . . we been asking the wrong questions.”)

Staged by L. Kenneth Richardson, the show takes the form of a revue: 11 sketches, played by seven actors. (Five, really. Little Ranisha Sanford appears in only one scene. Ron McBee plays drums from the audience.)

Each viewer will have his favorite and less favorite sketches. My less favorite ones were the ones where the words reiterated what the image had already made clear. “LaLa’s Opening,” for example, over-makes the familiar point that behind every Dream Girl (Loretta Devine) there’s a little girl (Ranisha Sanford).

The show also gets sententious from time to time, out of Wolfe’s desire to reassure the more literal members of the audience that he’s not really down on black people. Happily, his need to be outrageous soon bobs up again.

He’s pretty outrageous. The Taper erupted Wednesday night when Danitra Vance’s two wigs (Vickilyn Reynolds and Devine) got into a screaming match. Who are you going to trust, girl--her or me? What do you want--Afro power or woman power?

Having sat through one too many gospel musicals, your reviewer had to be restrained when the folks in that Chicago tenement solved all their problems by turning into the cast of “Mama, I Want to Sing.” (Great costuming here by Nancy L. Konrardy. Mama--Reynolds--and the couch are wearing the same slipcover.)

But this turns out to be a joke with a hook in it. “The Colored Museum” never lets us get too comfortable. There’s some very tough stuff here in Tommy Hollis’ reverie about how he comforted his Vietnam buddies by snuffing them.

There’s also a gentle piece about a 14-year-old (Vance) giving birth to a huge egg, and what her Mama said about that. It’s an African myth and it’s the people upstairs, both at once. Wolfe is a writer, and he gets a dynamite production from Richardson and his designers. (Brian Martin did the pristine set, Victor En Yu Tan the playful lighting, Anton Nelessen the shame-provoking slides.)

Also credit Kysia Bostic for some far-from-incidental music and Hope Clarke for some sharp choreography. First and last, though, there is the cast. At the curtain call, you keep waiting for the other players to come out--so few actors can’t create that many people.

Want to bet?

Plays at 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, at 7:30 p.m. Sundays, with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Closes June 19. Tickets $19-$25. 135 N. Grand Ave. (213) 410-1062 or (714) 634-1300. ‘THE COLORED MUSEUM’

George C. Wolfe’s play, at the Mark Taper Forum. Music Kysia Bostic. Director L. Kenneth Richardson. Music director Daryl Waters. Arrangements Bostic and Waters. Set Brian Martin. Costumes Nancy L. Konrardy. Lighting Victor En Yu Tan. Sound Rob Gorton. Slides Anton Nelessen. Choreography Hope Clarke. Production stage manager Tami Toon. Stage manager Maria Lee Schmidt. With Loretta Devine, Tommy Hollis, Ron McBee, Reggie Montgomery, Vickilyn Reynolds, Ranisha Sanford and Danitra Vance.