A Journey Into Selfhood in Solo ‘Spirit Awakening’

Uprooted from her homeland, African princess and Ghana-born Akuyoe immigrates to England and feels like “a speck of pepper in a sea of salt.” But that’s only a warm-up to what awaits her in Harlem where a tough, African-American street girl sneers, “Yo, yo, yo! Where’s your spear?”

With a startling array of inflections and idioms, and a mercurial ability to play myriad characters (male and female), writer-actress Akuyoe dramatizes an archetypal journey into selfhood in her solo show, “Spirit Awakening,” at the Gallery Theater in Barnsdall Park.

The production employs poetry, monologue, movement and drums (from percussionist Art Ture Oliva) to tell a story both personal and mythical. Toward the end of the journey, as the tall and slender Akuyoe peels away her fashionable hair and long, lacy white dress, we see a woman whose quest is heroic.

She not only unmasks lifelong affectations earmarked by an upper-crust British accent and trendy socializing in Manhattan (where she disdains ethnic restaurants for her beloved Russian Tea Room), but she finds an inner voice that reminds her: “You are an ancient warrior who knows the strength of each tight curl upon her head.”

Her newfound tight curls notwithstanding, she buries even her ethnic roots and embraces her “spirit awakening,” her totality and epiphany. It’s easy to see how inspirational she must be in her other life--conducting personal storytelling workshops for at-risk youth in the inner city.

In its flavor, economy, humor and cultural sweep, the show is exceptionally accomplished. It strongly suggests two other works of personal search: Alex Haley’s “Roots” and, closer to home, the current one-woman show about growing up an African-American child in America, Charlayne Woodard’s “Pretty Fire” at the Fountainhead Theater in Hollywood.

* “Spirit Awakening,” Gallery Theatre, Barnsdall Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, 8 p.m. Moves Nov. 14 to the Harman Avenue Theatre, 522 N. La Brea Ave., Saturdays and Mondays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 4 p.m. , indefinitely. $15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

Caught in Crossfire in ‘Soweto’s Burning’

Another product of Africa, apartheid, fuels the premiere of Ross Kettle’s three-character “Soweto’s Burning” at the Hudson Backstage Theatre.

Expository monologues distract and squander the opening, but events dramatically pick up in a lovers’ loft in Johannesburg (sharply designed and lit by Robert W. Zentis). A black man is discovered with a white woman by the woman’s white lover, an AWOL soldier who arrives home in the dead of night.

It’s a blistering scene because the black man and the white women, who work together in a nearby cabaret, are merely friends. A curfew triggered by violence in Soweto has prompted the woman to give the black man shelter from the authorities.

Not a breath of sexual nuance escapes the air, only deepening mutual respect between two people whose friendship, in this situation, threatens a whole society. The subsequent discovery by the seething boyfriend and his crazed vendetta are the heart of the play, electrically staged and performed by South African-born Kettle.

The attractive Musetta Vander, also from South Africa, catches the innocence of the embattled cabaret dancer, and the solid Terrance Ellis mirrors the fear of the reluctant guest caught in the crossfire.

* “Soweto’s Burning,” Hudson Backstage, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Thursday - Sunday, 8 p.m. Ends Nov. 22. $17-$20; (213) 660-6539. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

‘Minimum’ Parodies Nightclub Entertainers

You’ve seen them late at night through the haze of cigarette smoke, show-biz relics knocking out songs in a piano bar or a back room in Scranton. Now meet them at their funniest.

In the nightclub entertainment parody “No Minimum: A Musical on the Rocks,” at the Tamarind Theatre, April Winchell and Roy Leake Jr. hilariously re-create the world of the lounge lizard.

Playing 12 characters belting out folk, vaudeville and Broadway tunes from the Spare Room to the Red Room to the Lackawanna Plaza Hotel, Winchell and Leake make you feel that it’s a quarter of 3 in Vegas, and as the theater program warns: “There’s no one in the place except you and a really bad lounge act.”

Except that this duo’s act is sharp stuff. With nifty book and lyrics written by Winchell and Leake, the production is tightly paced, vocally impressive when it chooses to be, flavorfully accompanied on piano by musical director James May with perfectly murky lighting by production designer Joel Huxtable.

* “No Minimum,” Tamarind Theatre, 5919 Franklin Ave., Hollywood . Saturday and Sunday, 8 p.m., Saturday-Sunday matinees, 2 p.m. Ends Nov. 29. $15 (including pre-show appetizers and beverages); (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.

‘Cody Angelino’ Lacks Momentum and Focus

The title--a reference to an unseen hotshot Hollywood producer who’s always promising to help some actor but never shows up--is the best thing in this play. It hints at a tone and a savage irony that the production fails to deliver.

The trouble with plays about actors and writers is that the characters are so frequently single-minded and self-absorbed that only dazzling writing and direction will salvage them. But playwright P. Thomas Rossi and director Mark Blanchard accomplish little salvaging in “Cody Angelino Is Coming” at the Met Theatre.

We’re in Hollywood with eight show-business strugglers, their floundering marriages, romances and careers jumping back and forth between hearth and barroom. One of the women is raped after a party in her apartment yet seems relatively unflustered by it while it traumatizes her guilty husband.

One performance stands out: Joe Cortese as a glib, well-tailored, hack producer who leans toward high-concept movies with “Surf Nazi” in the title. Other performers (Kim Delaney, Caroline Jones and Peter Ashley as a screenwriter who talks like a longshoreman) lend color. But the play, broken into cinematic takes, lacks momentum and focus.

* “Cody Angelino Is Coming,” Met Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hollywood. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m., Sunday, 7 p.m. Indefinitely. $15; (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

‘Personality’ Looks at American Beauty Myth

There are some provocative ideas in Cathryn Michon’s edgy comedy about the American beauty myth, “Nice Personality,” at the Hollywood Actors Theatre. But they’re curiously deflated by a heroine whose chill factor refuses to melt until it’s too late.

Susan (Ellen Ratner) is unattractive and her own worst enemy. As armor, she wears dull, rumpled clothes, a perpetual scowl and spits nails--in this case, at two girlfriends, her hated aunt and a meek blind date (the endearing Gabe Cohen) who embodies the play’s “nice personality.”

But there’s a rub to being nice if you’re not good looking. Better to live alone, feels Susan, sublimating her insecurities in flaky art projects and scathing wit. Susan the reluctant heroine knows she can’t be pretty and assumes everyone else feels her ugliness, too.

That’s pointed characterization but a tough dramatic act to sustain, even for an actress as talented as Ratner (acclaimed for her one-woman show “Personality”).

The result is a curious production--well written (Michon is the executive story editor of “Designing Women”) and well staged with revealing childhood flashbacks by Eric Vennerbeck. But the material flags because you weary of Ratner’s one-note cynicism. Even the monstrous aunt (Shannon Welles) who drives her bananas begins to look like a nice old lady.

As the given beauty in the play, the dim, goldilocked Bethanny Alexander is well cast, but another friend (Elizabeth Eads) is blandly written and limply realized.

* “A Nice Personality,” Hollywood Actors Theatre, 1157 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m., Sunday, 7 p.m.. Ends Nov . 29. $10-$15; (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours.