‘Willows’ a Serious, Generational Drama

The overwrought title “When Willows Weep in Foxholes” makes the play at the Hudson Avenue Theatre sound like a parody, but Adriene D. Corbin’s work is hardly that. It’s a serious drama about the power struggle between African American women and men in a small Arkansas town over the course of three generations.

After an awkward monologue by Frankie Gaines (Karen Abercrombie), set in 1978, Corbin takes us back to 1933. That’s when Frankie’s parents Willow (Crystal Jackson) and James (Keith Amos) split, just before she was born, and just after the original Frankie (Teresa Truesdale), Willow’s best friend, left for Chicago. Willow is a formidable proto-feminist who insists on her independence, but how she got that way is not sufficiently fleshed out.

Then the play returns to 1978 and the day of Willow’s funeral. Frankie has become another strong woman, though she has ceded some of her life to her man (Hugh Dane). Now her own daughter, a college student also named Willow (Tamara Bass), is talking about finding a white sugar daddy who won’t force her to be the tower of strength the other women have been. This part of the play is better than the first part at filling in details.

Corbin’s writing deals sensitively with delicate issues, and Denise Dowse’s staging evokes moments of passion, but the play needs a stronger sense of showing as well as telling. The dialogue is too circular; the talk sometimes seems to exist in a vacuum. Malcolm Jamal-Warner “presents” the play and is the co-executive producer.

* “When Willows Weep in Foxholes,” Hudson Avenue Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends April 26. $20. (818) 789-8499. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.