‘Yesterday Came Too Soon’ Tells of Dandridge Tragedy

Champagne and chitlins, the refreshments in Dorothy Dandridge’s tawdry nightclub dressing room, symbolize the opposite worlds in which Hollywood’s first black female “star” could never find a home. As Jamal Williams’ play at the Metropole Theatre eloquently demonstrates, “Yesterday Came Too Soon” for Dandridge, whose career ended with a fatal antidepressant overdose in 1965. She was 42.

An affecting solo performance by Sloan Robinson humanizes Dandridge’s troubled life, evoking the charisma, sex appeal and talent that propelled her across the racial and social divide, as well as the fragile vulnerability that made her unable to live with the consequences of her breakthrough. In an intimate monologue delivered to an unseen interviewer, Robinson recounts her subject’s rise from Harlem nightclub performer to film actress, as well as her heartbreaking succession of romantic failures.

Both came to a head in 1953, when she landed the title role of “Carmen Jones” and began a torrid affair with her producer, Otto Preminger; he became her Svengali and she became pregnant. Ostracized by a resentful black community and never fully embraced by Hollywood, Dandridge slid into ruinous decline. An especially poignant sequence describes her grief at losing her mentally disabled daughter to state custody.

Except for a few overwrought reflective lines (“again the melody of my life changed”), the narration is thoroughly convincing, and director John H. Doyle’s measured pacing ensures that Dandridge’s story resonates in all its social implications. Like the histories of so many trailblazers, Dandridge’s tragedy paved the way for opportunities too easily taken for granted.

* “Yesterday Came Too Soon: The Dorothy Dandridge Story,” Metropole Theatre, 1277 N. Wilton Place, Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends April 27. $18 (Thursdays pay-what-you-can). (213) 993-7152. Running time: 2 hours.