STAGE REVIEW : New Theater, Old Problems for ‘Come Back’

Eric Monte, who wrote, produced and staged “If They Come Back,” reportedly also spent a good chunk of his own money to move it from the Inner City Cultural Center to the Henry Fonda Theatre where it’s now playing. Reviews were mixed at Inner City, and Monte might have saved himself a bundle if he had believed them.

This drama of a black family during the early years of the civil rights movement is amateurish on all levels--the writing, casting, sets, staging and a good deal of the acting. Monte, who wrote the film “Cooley High,” is co-creator of TV’s “Good Times” and creator of “What’s Happening!!,” has delivered a stage script without nuances.

The black guys are all good, the white all bad. A white sheriff is a nasty lech, white cops are brutal killers and everything that befalls this close-knit black Alabama family (including a crudely staged attack by Ku Klux Klansmen) makes of them martyrs or heroes.

Beyond this absence of dramatic muscle, Monte has cast so many of the roles implausibly that the production borders on self-parody.

As Mama, glamorous Alva Petway is playing someone many years older than she is and, with bandanna, droopy stockings and a baggy dress, turns herself into pure stereotype in the process. Ronn L.S. is much too young to play the kindly old black man, Mr. Jesse, and his phony gray beard looks like a Halloween factory reject.

For anyone who may have seen George C. Wolfe’s “The Colored Museum” at the Westwood or Mark Taper, “If They Come Back” (which, ironically, was part of the Taper’s 1972 New Theatre for Now series under the title “Revolution”) becomes what Wolfe calls a classic “mama-on-the-couch” play.

The third act perks up with a lively bit of social dancing at the top (Ka-Ron Brown Lehman choreographed) and ends up delivering some slightly more perceptive moments, thanks to Garon Grigsby and Gregory Travis who are solid actors and stand out as the brothers who carry most of the story. But the audience pays to get there. While both intermissions are too long, the second one was interminable at Friday’s performance--presumably (if all the hammering was any indication) to allow for construction of the third-act set.

Routine or aberration? In any case, hardly worth the wait. Production values are flimsy, a surprisingly low standard for a producer who comes from television and film. The entire evening clocks in at 2 1/2 hours. It feels like 10.

At 6126 Hollywood Blvd., Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays 7 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2, indefinitely. Tickets: $15-$29.50; (213) 468-1765 or (213) 410-1062.