Wolfe Shows ‘Spunk’ at Itchey Foot

George C. Wolfe, who wowed audiences last year with his “The Colored Museum,” was back in town recently to wow them again with his adaptation of “Spunk” (newly opened at the Itchey Foot Ristorante). Starring in this collection of three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston are Bruce Beatty, Loretta Devine, Charlaine Woodard, Harry Waters Jr. and Hawthorne James, with Chick Street Man on blues guitar.

“I loved these stories,” Wolfe said of his decision to stage the work (which may extend). “The language is very theatrical; you can hear the words. And it has a classical colored elegance. The rhythms have a compelling texture and tension, like lights shooting in the dark. This is like a chamber reading. It’s also an interesting exercise--an exercise because it’s only about language.”

“Sweat,” he explained, tells the story of a washerwoman and her husband: “It’s what happens when other people--in this case, her husband--set out to destroy someone out of misplaced rage. All the wife has is her daily ritual of doing laundry, her sweat dripping into the laundry. It’s a static, brutal life.

“ ‘The Gilded Six Bits’ is about a young couple, totally in love--the betrayals that happen and the ultimate forgiveness. And ‘Story in Harlem Slang’ is about people who’ve moved to New York; they’ve taken on the posturing, but they don’t know how to fit it. They don’t have money or jobs, but they know how to talk. The virtuosity is in their use of the language.”

Following the opening, Wolfe returned to New York, where he’s got irons in a number of fires: the screenplay for a film about Josephine Baker for Orion, a new play (“on the shifting identity about what makes a family”) which will bow at the Public Theatre, and the Broadway opening this fall of his “Mr. Jellylord” with Gregory Hines. When that’s done, he plans to return to the Hurston work, perhaps to mount a full staging.

“She forgives people for being human,” Wolfe concluded, “which a lot of other writers don’t.” Like him? He burst out laughing.

“Of course not!”

DIAZ DRAMA: A woman finds herself a prisoner to her tortured past in “A Cry in the Distance” (by Argentine/Chliean/Spanish playwright Jorge Diaz), at the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts. “The play is not about actual torture, but the effect it has on an individual,” said Annette Cardona, who plays the real life-inspired role of a woman incarcerated for her leftist politics.

“She was raped and beaten,” the actress said. “Her husband was killed. Her daughter was taken away from her when she was 2; now she lives with (her mother’s) torturers. She was allowed to leave because she gave them information--to save her life, but mostly to save her daughter’s. Now, 10 years later, she’s remarried and living in Spain. It’s about her relationships: with her husband, her friends, and the guys she hires to beat her.”

Cardona feels especially close to the material. She spent several months in Nicaragua four years ago, filming the Haskell Wexler film “Latino.” “I did not witness actual torture,” the actress noted, “but I did see the after-effects, visiting the wives whose husbands had just been tortured. There is no real life there, and no solutions. But I did come back with a better sensitivity to human beings.”

Margarita Galban directs both English and Spanish-language versions of “Cry.” They alternate on different nights of the week.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: August Wilson’s drama “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” set in a black boardinghouse in 1911 Philadelphia, recently opened at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Roscoe Lee Browne stars.

The Times’ Sylvie Drake praised Browne’s “memorable performance,” yet noted: “Wilson’s skill lies in layering his pieces so they always give us far more than meets the eye, even if the ending of ‘Joe Turner’ unlike that of ‘Fences’), despite its passion, seems too pat.”

From Daryl H. Miller in the Daily News: “The weakest aspect of ‘Joe Turner’ is Claude Purdy’s direction. Wilson hasn’t written much heightening or lessening of emotional tension into his script, but he has provided some. Purdy has failed to capture it, however.”

Disagreed Drama-Logue’s T.H. McCulloh: “Purdy guides this co-production between LATC and San Francisco’s ACT with an insightful key to the shifting rhythms and gentle nuances of Wilson’s yeasty dialogue and the affecting differences between the last generation and the next. He knows what the writing and characters are about.”

Said Thomas O’Connor in the Orange County Register: “In what seems a dubious move for a play of such broad emotional dimension, director Purdy (has) opted for exaggerated stylization instead of selective, naturalistic detail. Instead of graceful accumulation of force, this ‘Joe Turner’ looks like a choreographed ballet account.”

Noted the Herald-Examiner’s Richard Stayton: “ ‘Joe Turner’ is what’s known as a ‘tough sit’: three hours long, packed with stories, incidents, minor and major characters. Wilson also makes staggering demands on his actors. Fortunately at LATC, a superb ensemble rises to Wilson’s bold challenge.”

And from Sandra Kreiswirth in the Daily Breeze: “So far, this is Wilson’s most fully-realized work, combining myriad theatrical elements in a production that is moody, spirited, humorous, touching and poetic.”