Her Family Matters

Charlayne Woodard is a gifted storyteller and an actress of dazzling energy and talent, as she amply demonstrates in her one-woman play, “Neat,” at the Mark Taper Forum. Woodard ties the story of her adolescence and her relationship with her aunt, mildly retarded from a childhood accident, into a trenchant tale of growing up black in America in the ‘60s and ‘70s. More obliquely, “Neat” also represents the voyage of an actress finding her own exuberant voice.

A lithe Woodard first enters the stage in overalls, looking about 12 years old. As a performer, Woodard has technique to spare--she flies into each role, impersonating the arrogant gait of the coolest boy in high school, the regal bearing of her no-nonsense grandmother, or the slightly crooked, always smiling form of her beloved aunt, who was accidentally fed camphorated oil as a baby by an illiterate grandmother left in charge when Neat’s mother went to work. Finding the unconscious baby, Neat’s mother went running to the nearest hospital, a whites-only facility in Savannah, Ga., where no doctor would treat the baby. By the time she got to the appropriate facility, the baby was brain-damaged.

“Neat” is a companion piece to Woodard’s first play, “Pretty Fire,” which began life at the Fountainhead Theatre in Hollywood and went on to win acclaim across the country. “Neat” takes Woodard into her high school years, in Albany, N.Y., living in the bosom of a large tight-knit family. When Neat comes to live with them, Woodard becomes her unofficial caretaker by virtue of Neat’s special affection for her.

Woodard relates key stories in her emotional autobiography, all of them linked in one way or another to Neat. In junior high, she identifies with the Jewish girls in school, straightening her hair and even learning Hebrew words, which she in turn tries to teach to Neat. This prompts Neat to ask, “Where do we come from?” And Neat’s questions send the teenage Woodard to the university library to properly educate herself in her own heritage. Eventually, she joins a black student alliance that demands the high school furnish them with a full library on African American history. The principal refuses to meet with them and, instead, sends the riot police into their assembly, effectively starting a riot.

This is a harrowing tale, carrying as it does a young woman’s first realization of a wide world that, against all common sense, rejects fairness out of hand. Another high point in the evening is Woodard’s memory of her first sexual thrill, at the hands of the dreamy Charles Bowman. As she plays both parts of the necking couple, she vividly summons up the idiotic excitement of first love, the kind that renders a person able only to form the words, “Yes, Charles,” in response to anything said by the beloved.

While Woodard may be gifted as a storyteller, her impulse as a playwright tends with too little variation toward the emotionally emphatic, and as a playwright she underlines every thought and feeling she presents. This emphatic quality--along with an abundance of uplifting moments--intrudes on the totality of the evening. The story of Neat, for instance, seems like a fable, so prepped are we for its outcome by Woodard’s persistent foreshadowing, accompanied usually by Harold Wheeler’s Hallmark Card-like piano music. When Neat’s story finally winds up, it seems as preordained as a Bible tale.

The excellent director Daniel Sullivan does a fastidious job, and his pacing is impeccable. Several of Woodard’s stories, particularly one involving the naming of a baby, are completely riveting--a viewer can visualize a whole room full of people there on the stage. However, in the near absence of real conflict between Woodard and the other familiar characters she portrays, he could have toned down some of the actress’ more poetical passages. Perhaps, too, a smaller space would have given the evening a less emotionally inflated air.

“Neat” may at times be a little too neat. But Woodard has a fierce talent, an equally fierce life force and a trunk full of fascinating stories to tell.

* “Neat,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Ends Feb. 1. $29-$37. (213) 628-2772. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.

A Mark Taper Forum production. Written and performed by Charlayne Woodard. Directed by Daniel Sullivan. Sets Riccardo Hernandez. Costumes Candice Cain. Lights Brian Nason. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Original music Harold Wheeler. Production stage manager Mary Michele Miner.