Following a Star to Africa : Joan Crawford’s visit with the Zulus is the starting point for a comedy with a message

“Africa was, in a sense, my baptism in Pepsi, and I have a great affection for that continent.”

--Joan Crawford

As a playwright with a taste for the oddly comic, Neil Tucker likes to think that if a situation isn’t immediately funny, he can make it that way.

Even when the situation is catastrophic--such as the ‘70s oil embargo or the 1987 Whittier earthquake--Tucker has twisted the material into comedy in such plays as “Oil!” and “Aftershock: The Movie.”

But when he cracked open Joan Crawford’s sometimes unconsciously wacky autobiography, “My Way of Life” (sample line: “When I went to London to make ‘Trog,’ I had 37 pieces of luggage”), and came across an episode from the mega-star’s life, Tucker felt as if he had been handed a comedy on a plate.

“Here it is.” Tucker is pointing to a page in Crawford’s book showing her and her husband, Pepsi-Cola President Alfred Steele, happily posing with a regally decorated Zulu chief. Above the picture is Crawford’s caption: “Zululand was fantastically colorful and the friendliest place ever.”

“My first glimpse of this,” Tucker says, “made me laugh for days. I mean, Joan Crawford having this bonding with the Zulu people in South Africa in the mid-’50s. Nobody could even make that up.”

Perhaps not, but starting with this nutty anecdote in Hollywood history, Tucker has made it up from there in his comedy, “Joan and the Zulus,” playing at the Cast Theatre.

Nevertheless, comedy doesn’t exactly sum up the play’s intentions, at least as Tucker, director John DiFusco and actress Grace Zabriskie (as Crawford) explain it. What deceptively appears to be a campy frolic is, Zabriskie says, “a spiritual comedy.”

Then Zabriskie adds: “This is very much Neil saying goodby to himself, and being able to laugh about things he hadn’t been able to laugh about before.”

That is because Tucker, 45, has tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, which leads to AIDS. A year ago this month, soon after he received the test results, the playwright pulled a 1980 draft of “Joan” out of his files. “I have a ton of unproduced scripts,” Tucker says, “but I picked this one since I wanted to be near laughter.”

Returning to it after the long hiatus, he added some fresh dimensions to Crawford’s adventure with the Zulus and Pepsi, from an African goddess/chorus named Ulanga (Earnestine Phillips) to a mysterious disease that breaks out in Zululand after Crawford’s celebratory visit.

Even though Tucker isn’t divulging details, his imagined epidemic may be one of the first in a comedy, spiritual or not. “It does have strange parallels to AIDS, but it’s never overt,” says Tucker, who also leads stress-reduction workshops for people with HIV at the Gay and Lesbian Center in West Hollywood. “As Ulanga says,” adds Zabriskie, “ ‘Plagues may come and go, but a curse turns into a blessing in the compassionate arms of Ulanga.’ ”

It’s about as far from a poor-me strategy for healing as a playwright could concoct, but it’s one, Tucker says, that Crawford herself would have understood.

“She was a devout Christian Scientist,” he says, “and I arrange things so her faith eventually links with the Zulus’ own. Joan’s dedication to the Zulus was also very much an extension of her 30 years’ worth of extravagant attention to her fans. It was always very genuine. But she was also highly attuned to the uses of publicity.”

So, for that matter, was Pepsi-Cola, which quickly realized how Crawford’s presence alongside Steele, as they opened bottling plants throughout the Third World, attracted media attention. There are few more potent American exports and symbols of the American pop culture empire--then and now--than movies and soft drinks; during the height of the Cold War, Crawford was a sales image for both.

Ever since the appearance of the book and movie version of “Mommie Dearest,” Crawford’s eldest daughter Christina’s notorious account of her tortured upbringing, a beastly superimposition has crept over Crawford’s image, formerly that of an eccentric but regal star. “Joan and the Zulus” does show, Tucker says, “a cruel, obsessive streak in Joan, but this is not the Joan of ‘Mommie Dearest.’ It’s a far better film than the kind of camp trash it’s been made out to be, maybe the best ever on a Hollywood star, and Christina’s revelation of the secret war against children is much like Magic Johnson’s contribution to AIDS awareness.

“But we’re having affectionate, outrageous fun with Joan here. I’ve included, for instance, her actual maid, a kind of adopted mother she called ‘Mamacita’ (Sandy Martin), who goes a little nuts when a Zulu delegation visits Joan at her New York penthouse.

“Joan made herself, this little girl from Missouri named Lucille LeSeur, into somebody named ‘Joan Crawford.’ And I’m consciously creating a myth of a myth.”

Isn’t the double burden, though, of Zabriskie’s playing Crawford and following Faye Dunaway’s larger-than-life “Mommie Dearest” portrayal a tad excessive? Zabriskie, who is regularly seen either at Stages (where Tucker saw her in “Camaralenta”) or in David Lynch’s movies (she was a kind of she-devil in ‘Wild At Heart’ and will be in Lynch’s upcoming feature, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me”), refuses to see Joan as a burden at all.

“I decided to think of it this way: Faye Dunaway did the definitive serious Joan, and I’m doing the definitive humorous Joan. I let go worrying about the total Joan, and instead chose aspects of her work from later roles, grande dame types, which didn’t have nearly the range of her earlier ones.”

“Grace,” remarks director DiFusco, “has one thing in common with Joan, and that’s perfectionism. She has more notes than I have. I’m serious! She built her character internally, in her own way, and though I helped her add a few ‘Joan-isms,’ the creation of this Joan Crawford is mostly Grace’s work.”

Zabriskie says: “When Neil came up to me at a New Year’s party and said, ‘My New Year’s resolution is for you to play Joan Crawford,’ I thought, ‘Whoa.’ I didn’t see it at all. But after we did a reading and a makeup test at the Cast last April, it started to come together.”

And just as it did, it had to wait for Zabriskie, who was the only actress Tucker and DiFusco would consider for Crawford. Ironically, the role of perhaps the ultimate movie star had to wait until Zabriskie was done with a seven-month spate of movies.

“I had to do this for Neil,” Zabriskie says. “With the state of Neil’s health, there was no way to put this off forever. In this life, there is no ‘forever.’ ”