‘Diva Like Me’ Sings a Worthy Story

It takes guts to pen an autobiographical musical at 36, especially when you’re not a star in the People magazine sort of way.

But diminutive Ren Woods didn’t become a film, television, theater and recording artist by being shy about her talents or abilities. And by the end of her world premiere, “A Diva Like Me: Ren Woods in Concert,” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, it’s clear she has a great story to tell.

She just needs help shaping and polishing it until it’s worthy of her formidable personality and voice, especially if she intends to take it to New York, which she would like to do.

Woods’ story is at once a triumphal and cautionary tale of a little girl not unlike the Dorothy she played in the first national tour of “The Wiz,” who believed in herself, had that belief smashed and, ultimately, as a woman, learned to trust in herself again.

At the age of 8, the Chicago-born Woods decided she would be famous. She started a singing group called the Three Little Souls in Portland, Ore., where her mother, a nurse, had moved her six children after her divorce. That group took off when a manager spied the possibilities, renamed them Sunday’s Child, and booked them on television, alongside such acts as Jack Benny, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Her group performed in Hope’s last tour of Vietnam.

The same manager who made her, though, almost broke her with increasing abusive and possessive behavior. Landing the part in “The Wiz” was her escape.

In later years, she played Kunte Kinte’s girlfriend on “Roots,” where she earned her “diva” moniker after refusing to do a scene topless; sang an electrifying “Aquarius” in the film “Hair”; did various television stints; and recorded albums for CBS and Elektra.

“A Diva Like Me” had a workshop production last year in Los Angeles as part of the Mark Taper Forum-based Blacksmyths’ annual festival of works by African Americans. But the work, in a first full production here, is uneven like a patchwork quilt in which some sections are exquisite but the whole fails to find its focus.

One has a feeling Woods has a lot more to say than she’s saying here, about being an African American woman, about love, even about show business. The show dwells on one failed relationship (“Shangri-La-La-La”) and never even mentions the marriage that led to her son, Duran, who’s now 14. She divorced when her son was 4.

In the script, co-written with Julian Plunkett-Dillon, she pours out her grief at her mother’s death without telling us enough about her life to let us know of the enormous hole she left. Woods alludes to black-white tensions, particularly in the tale of her first manager, an abusive white man, but doesn’t let you know how she feels about the racial divide. Instead she devotes a song to Bobby Kennedy (whom she met as a child) and inexplicably addresses him in the lyrics as “Mr. President.”

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And yet, Woods was able to hold the audience in her hand for much of the show, connecting and bonding with those watching her until they were laughing, singing, grieving with her. Lisa Harlow Stark’s original music is at times very good indeed, although when Woods momentarily breaks into a song from “The Wiz,” it whets the appetite for the rest of that song and other classics you know she could do so well.

Her fabulous four-person backup band stars in its own right. Kevin D. Cooper, Alvin “Happy” Kennedy, Peter X. Schneider and Bachman Tom create an intimate, high-energy atmosphere. Backup singers Dominique Ashanti-Dubois and Angelic Nicol Willis do nice work in a variety of supporting roles. L. Kenneth Richardson, Blacksmyths founder-director, who directed the world premiere of George C. Wolfe’s “The Colored Museum” in 1986, needs to help her even out the material.

The potential is here. It’s exciting even in its raw form. That’s why it would be such a shame not to ease “A Diva Like Me” a bit further down the road before its next outing.

* “A Diva Like Me: Ren Woods in Concert,” San Diego Repertory Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, San Diego. Tuesdays, 7 p.m., Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 23. $20-$28. (619) 544-1000. Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes.

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“A Diva Like Me: Ren Woods in Concert,”

Ren Woods: Herself

Dominique Ashanti-Dubois: Backup Singer

Angelic Nicol Willis: Backup Singer

Aqeel Rasheed: Rapper

A San Diego Repertory Theatre production of a world premiere musical written by Ren Woods with co-writer Julian Plunkett-Dillon. Original music and lyrics by Lisa Harlow Stark. Additional music and lyrics by Ren Woods. Directed by L. Kenneth Richardson. Choreography: Javier Velasco. Sets: D. Martyn Bookwalter. Costumes: Kenton. Lights: Jose Lopez. Sound: Michael Roth.