‘Jar the Floor’ a Bit Too Tidy

Cheryl L. West’s domestic comedy “Jar the Floor” takes its title from MaDear (Amentha Dymally), a superstitious nonagenarian who summons the spirit of her dead husband with the foot-stomping cry: “Jar that floor!” Translation: Show me you’re still alive.

The absence of males figures prominently in this sweet but overly schematic play, at International City Theatre in Long Beach. Four generations of African American women have gathered to celebrate MaDear’s 90th birthday at the suburban Chicago home of her granddaughter MayDee (Peggy Blow).

West has neatly packaged each character as a generational emblem, which helps explain the play’s appeal. Thus MaDear is coping with encroaching senility, her brassy daughter Lola (Joahn Webb) with middle-age loneliness, Lola’s daughter MayDee with career and family and MayDee’s college-age daughter Vennie (Cee-Cee Harshaw) with sexuality and identity. Even the central conflict between uptight MayDee and free-spirited Vennie, who has brought home her cancer-stricken pal Raisa (Grace Zandarski), seems a bit too tidy.

But if “Jar the Floor” panders to its female demographic, then at least it does so with style and a sharp sense of the colloquial. When Lola produces a bottle of liquor for the morning coffee, she says conspiratorially, “Coffee is for morning--we’re just pouring a little evening into it.”

Director caryn morse’s handsome mounting on Bradley Kaye’s set--a convincing reproduction of a middle-class living room--features workmanlike performances all around. Standouts are the wise-cracking Webb and the seemingly effortless Harshaw.

* “Jar the Floor,” International City Theatre, Long Beach City College, Clark Street and Harvey Way, Long Beach. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Feb. 18. $18. (310) 420-4128. Running time: 2 hours.