THEATER REVIEW : Progressive’s Colorization of Nativity Is Refreshing, Spirited

White Christmases are usually the order of the day in San Diego. Not in the weather department, but certainly in the color of the faces we’re accustomed to seeing on our stages.

What a refreshing change to find Langston Hughes’ “Black Nativity” added to the holiday mix at the Progressive Stage Company, through Dec. 18.

“Black Nativity” is not new; it premiered on Broadway on Dec. 11, 1961. But the story and celebration of Jesus told through Gospel songs is new to San Diego.

Credit director Floyd Gaffney, who co-produced the production, and the Progressive, which is showing an increasing commitment to accommodate small companies needing space. Gaffney brought black audiences into the San Diego Repertory Theatre with his direction of “The Colored Museum” earlier this season.

To hear Gaffney tell it, bringing the play to the Progressive was a bit of a fluke. He had wanted to do “Black Nativity” for years as an alternative to “the white Scrooges” one usually sees on local stages at Christmastime. But the Educational Cultural Complex (ECC), which he usually relies upon to do black plays for black audiences, “dragged their feet” on the project, he said.

ECC’s loss is downtown San Diego’s gain.

The gospel selections run the gamut from the rousing to the rapturous with some blues-tinged yearning thrown in for good measure. The songs, the singers and the dancing are the strength of the show. One only hopes the floorboards can handle the foot-stomping pressure.

The musical’s first act is structured of loosely woven Gospel selections that trace the path of weary Joseph and Mary looking for a place to bear the child. The chorus sometimes sings for the actors, with Gwen Payton-Matthews doing a poignant “No Room” as Joseph and Mary are turned away from the inn and Kirk Duncan bringing wonder into “They Were Guided by a Shining Star” as he describes how the Wise Men found the baby.

In the second act, the 11-person cast doffs its Middle Eastern turbans and rough-textured robes for the fans, tambourines, Bibles and blue-and-white Gospel robes of a modern Gospel revival meeting.

It’s an abrupt switch that seems to call out for a narrative transition. But the part of the narrator, played with high energy by Ernest McCray in the first act, is gone from the second as the show moves from one church song to the next.

It’s not that the show has to be a black “Godspell” or the alternative to “Cotton Patch Gospel”--the Georgia-set musical that recently had Jesus and the apostles dancing on a painted depiction of the Confederate flag at the Lamb’s Players Theatre.

But Gaffney and musical director the Rev. Don H. Boger were given license not only with the choice and arrangement of songs, but with the original Broadway text. They should take advantage of that and bring us into the world of the teachings and perhaps even the death, as well as the birth.

But what they do offer us in the meantime is no small feat. The songs fill the Progressive’s newly expanded space (from 45 to 70 seats now) to the rafters and then some.

Credit the singers, especially Antonio Payton, Payton-Matthews, Duncan, Krista Armstrong, Berrel Matthews, George Callahan and Regina Anderson.

And credit the vision. Part of the pain of the escaped black laborer in August Wilson’s recent offering, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” was that the man could not reconcile the white face of what he had been told was God with his own black face.

The glory of “Black Nativity” is that it offers a mirror that allows blacks to see themselves in the tradition in an irresistible way that everyone can appreciate and celebrate.

“BLACK NATIVITY”

By Langston Hughes. Director, Floyd Gaffney. Music director, the Rev. Don H. Boger. Choreographer, Louis Chavis. Set and lighting, David V. Chandler. Costume mistress, Patra Payne. With Ernest McCray, Deborah Branch, Antonio Payton, Morris White, Kirk Duncan, George Callahan, Eric Overstreet, Gwen Payton-Matthews, Berrel Matthews, Krista Armstrong, Regina Anderson and Mena Ismael. At 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday, through Dec. 18. At 433 G St., at 5th Ave., San Diego.