THEATER REVIEW : Watts Serves as Backdrop for Cornerstone’s ‘Sid Arthur’

It’s no accident that “Sid Arthur,” a play loosely based on Hermann Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha,” opens with a slide of the Watts Towers. As part of its far-flung community outreach program, the Cornerstone Theater Company’s latest production takes place in Watts. In fact, if you stand on the front lawn of St. John’s Methodist Church, where the production is housed, you can see the historical towers looming just down the block.

Currently undergoing renovation, these fragile, crumbling structures are surrounded by massive tiers of scaffolding. There’s an obvious metaphor to be inferred here. Drive around the adjacent streets, and you will find sparkling new strip malls and restaurants abutting ramshackle old buildings. Like nothing else in the area, the Watts Towers emblematize a community in transition, caught in the delicate balance between the old and the new. Cornerstone veteran Shishir Kurup made this dichotomy the basis for his adaptation.

Sidney Arthur (Quentin Drew), an African American college student, balks at following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a minister, preferring instead to go out in the world to seek his “bliss.” His quest takes him first into the ranks of a nonviolent activist group, then into homelessness, then to the heights of Hollywood success. But Sidney ultimately abandons his materialistic path and journeys back to the old ‘hood, where he finds peace as a traffic crossing guard.

Yet another timely metaphor there--but metaphors, no matter how apt, do not necessarily a play make. Those who are familiar with Cornerstone’s critically lauded professional productions should understand that this cast is primarily composed of amateurs from the community. The resulting production is less a play than a mission, a timely reaching out to the community at large.

Under the capable direction of Page Leong, another Cornerstone regular, the cast acquits itself competently. Drew lends Sidney an ingenuous but thoroughly virile appeal, Sandra A. Layne has a nicely naturalistic quality as a singing star who teaches Sidney the pleasures of the flesh, and Erica Fashawn Meeks is precociously assured as Sidney’s daughter. Cornerstone regular Armando Molina displays a welcome professionalism as a hypertensive Hollywood manager.

Nephelie Andonyadis incorporates artworks from the area’s children in her stark set design. Kurup and Paris Barclay wrote the original music, an amalgam of New Age and rap sung by a chorus in counterpoint to the action.

On one level, Kurup’s turgid plot needs more oomph. On another level, “Sid Arthur” is community theater in the truest sense of the phrase, bubbling over with heartfelt good intentions, ultimately more edifying than entertaining.

* “Sid Arthur,” Cornerstone Theater Company, St. John’s Methodist Church, 1715 Santa Ana Blvd., Watts. Fridays-Saturdays, 7 p.m. Saturday - Sunday matinees, 2 p.m. Ends Sunday. All performances pay-what-you-can. (213) 567-8634. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.