THEATER REVIEW : ‘Sang’ Fails to Harmoniously Unite 5 Divas

Imagine Sartre’s “No Exit” with a cast that includes five legendary divas of blues, jazz and gospel, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what “Sang, Sista, Sang” is all about.

The new musical play by William (Mickey) Stevenson, who co-produced with Smokey Robinson at the newly renovated El Rey Theatre, places Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Josephine Baker and Mahalia Jackson in a kind of purgatory as they await assignment to their final destinations.

Aside from the obvious and ultimately negative association with “No Exit,” the premise has possibilities. What were the common threads linking the lives of these five, influential African- American women? How would they have interacted and related, given their analogous experiences of surviving as media stars in an often racist society?

Stevenson’s script attempts to answer the questions by creating potentially conflictive characterizations for the singers: Smith is down-home, funky and rural; Holiday’s elegance is touched with an acerbic undercurrent of cynicism; Washington is boisterous and self-centered; Baker has a fake French accent and an obsessive need to display her body; Jackson is a saintly mediator who will eventually direct the others on an upward rather than downward path.

The problem is that the characterizations are far too one-dimensional to be effective. Worse, they diminish both the quality and the substance of the originals. B’anca’s rendering of Washington, for example, has a petulant, aggressive, even obnoxious manner that reduces Washington’s emotional convolutions to the level of a strident cartoon. Tanya Montgomery’s Jackson errs in the other direction, concocting an image so upright and virtuous that it defies belief. And Stefani Spruill’s Baker, accurate as her visual portrayal appears to be, fails to capture the expatriate singer’s inherently dualistic complexities.

Patricia Hodges’ Smith and Sweet Baby J’ai’s Holiday have a stronger quality of legitimacy. Hodges is clearly a first-rate actor who instills the role--despite the limitations in the way it’s written--with a fascinating interior mixture of pain and humor. Sweet Baby J’ai finds kindred intricacies in her version of Holiday.

Stevenson provides each performer with a brief monologue exposing his view of the singers’ inner feelings. The result, for the most part, is histrionic excess and further evidence of failure to fully grasp the emotional depths of these fascinating women.

The music has similar difficulties, despite the fact that the actors are all talented singers. Perhaps aware of the script’s second act lack of momentum, Stevenson unexpectedly appends one of the show’s better moments via a brief set of Washington songs, sung with some authenticity by B’anca. Curiously, none of the other characters--except for Montgomery’s brief and attractive gospel medley--is afforded a comparable musical exposition.

That may be just as well, since the score otherwise has little sense of historical stylistic relevance. Hodges (as Smith) and J’ai (as Holiday) are limited--with one or two exceptions--to singing tunes with noticeably out-of-sync, contemporary accompaniments. And Spruill is not given the sort of material that can properly depict Baker’s uniqueness.

Lonny Stevens directed and also designed the set. Musical numbers were staged and choreographed by Ka-Ron Brown, with vocal arrangements by Ronnie Hasley.

*”Sang, Sista, Sang,” El Rey Theatre, 5517 Wilshire Blvd. Mondays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Aug. 31. $20-$35. (213) 388-0762).