A Veritable Feast for the Ears

There were times during a recent L.A. Theatre Works live radio theater performance of “The Colored Museum” when actors Loretta Devine and Keith Jefferson would close their eyes onstage, ease back in their chairs, and seem to float on pillows of sound. Such are the pleasures of radio, that the mind’s eye beholds what the eyes cannot see.

“I close my eyes and listen to the beautiful language George C. Wolfe has written, and it engulfs everything inside of me,” Jefferson explained in a conversation after one performance last February before an audience at the Skirball Cultural Center. Said Devine, “They told us we could do that, to listen. With my eyes closed I try to imagine what it would be like on the radio. There were many people in the audience who did that.” Indeed there were, and it seemed a sweet revenge that Wolfe’s somewhat dated, highly visual musical satire on African American life would find a fresh new forum, and an enduring afterlife, in the antique medium of radio.

Part of L.A. Theatre Works’ “The Play’s the Thing” series, a taped version of the production will air on KCRW-FM (89.9) today at 6 p.m. It stars Jefferson, Kimberly Scott and LATW veteran Charlie Robinson, and reunites Devine with “Colored Museum” original cast members Vickilyn Reynolds and Reggie Montgomery.

Reynolds and Devine brilliantly reprise the roles they developed 13 years ago at New Jersey’s Crossroads Theater and the New York Shakespeare Festival, respectively. Montgomery, however, takes on a director’s role here, bypassing a chance to reanimate the career-launching, Bacardi-guzzling drag queen of “Miss Roj,” which he played memorably in the New York production.

“George [Wolfe] recommended that I direct this,” says Montgomery, who has moved from acting to directing in the past several years, staging a number of productions on the East Coast, including Hartford Stage Company productions of Wolfe’s “The Colored Museum” and “Spunk.”

“I have never done radio. This is a new form for me. And this piece is a very visual piece. Things had to be changed. I don’t mean rewritten, but we are finding out what things would or would not work because of the different form.”

In 1986, “The Colored Museum” elevated the careers of Wolfe, Montgomery, Reynolds and Devine. “I had never heard of George Wolfe,” recalled Reynolds, who until recently was part of the national touring company of “Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk,” which Wolfe co-conceived and directed, first at New York’s Public Theater (where he is now artistic director) and later on Broadway and on tour. “I was in the original New Jersey cast [of “Colored Museum”]. For my role, they primarily wanted to know that I could sing. But when I read the script, I said, ‘Oh my God, this is profound--and funny.’ For black people, you get to laugh at the stereotypes; but then for white folk to see! It was like, ‘See. You been saying this all the time about us. But this is a joke to us, and not who we are.’

“I have always felt that white people didn’t know that to be black people, we have to be like chameleons.”

When the show moved from Crossroads to the Public, Reynolds met Devine, who would soon become her real-life best friend. “We stayed best friends ever since we did this so many years ago,” Devine recalled. “I had just finished doing ‘Dreamgirls,’ and the talk of the town around New York was that there was this new show coming. I read the script and said, ‘Oh my God, I will never get a chance to do this.’ But I auditioned for the La La part, and I got it. I was so amazed, because La La is so broad and huge compared to what I thought my personality was at the time. My agents were so upset because I chose this, making absolutely no money, and I had no idea that it would be the sort of thing that pivoted my career from where I was into the next phase. I got a chance to go to London. I got a chance to come out here to L.A. to do it. And from that I got my first pilot for television, ‘Sugar & Spice,’ that Vicki and I did together. So it sort of really did project our careers into the next phase.”

For L.A. Theatre Works founder and executive producer Susan Albert Loewenberg, there was no question she should reunite as much of the original cast as she could when she decided to re-create Wolfe’s seminal work for radio. “I have always adored this piece,” Loewenberg said. “When I saw it at the Mark Taper Forum [in 1988], I was absolutely blown away by it.” Over the years she met and eventually worked with Devine on several productions, including the Ron Milner-Steve Albrezzi adaptation of William Bradford Huie’s “Ruby McCollum.” When she decided to do “Colored Museum,” she immediately called Devine.

“I asked her if she would do it. She said yes, and then we were able to get Vickilyn. Then I asked George Wolfe who he wanted to have direct, and he said Reggie, and I was thrilled. A show like this, which is so complicated, you really have to have a core of people who know the show to do it justice. You are able to work more quickly.”

Robinson, who had not done the play before but was the only performer with experience doing radio theater, said, “I’ve done five shows for Susan and the company. It’s different from doing television because you have to use your voice to make it work. This play has a different kind of rhythm, even more so than you would find in a classical work. It took me a while to find the flavor.” Tony nominee Kimberly Scott (“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone”) joined the cast when Charlayne Woodard withdrew just before the start of rehearsals. Scott opens the radio play as “Miss Pat,” the perky flight attendant of a slave ship.

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Like all of the company’s productions, “The Colored Museum” was pulled together over two high-pressure days of rehearsal, and the on-air production represents the best recorded elements mixed from the four live shows and “sweetened” later in a recording studio. The key to bringing “The Colored Museum” to radio was not merely transforming the work’s distinctive landscape and satirical bite from visual images to audio, but also to reclaim Wolfe’s incomparable rhythmic pulse, which drives and gives fire and wings to the narrative. “The audience plays a great part of what the rhythm source is of the show,” Montgomery said.

Things hadn’t always seemed so rosy. On the first day of rehearsals, the cast was in despair because they had not found a viable way to portray, with radio sound techniques (known as “Foley” techniques), one of Wolfe’s most visually hilarious “exhibits”--”The Hairpiece.” The scene involves an argument between rival wigs, played by Reynolds and Devine. Its humor rests on the rapid-fire visual and verbal puns arising from Reynolds’ Afro “with an attitude” and from the flouncing, carefree tresses of Devine’s “Barbie doll dipped in chocolate.”

Devine was worried that “they are cutting the hair piece because there is no way for the audience to know that these are wigs talking, with a woman sitting between them, and no way for her to visually snatch the wigs off.” Montgomery and LATW veteran radio producer Ray Guarna solved the problem simply by having Robinson read the stage directions, as a live voice-over, to establish the scene.

There had been some concerns that Wolfe’s play, once considered groundbreaking and shocking for the philosophical and moral risks it took and for the virtuosity of its stagecraft and language, is now dated. “So many things came out of this piece that it’s not given credit for,” Devine said. “Miss Roj’s ‘snap thing’ was picked up by ‘In Living Color.’ And all the new edgy humor, things like what they are doing on ‘The PJs’ [on which Devine is the voice of Muriel, Eddie Murphy’s TV wife]. All of these are hybrid types of comedy that George created way back before those things came about.”

Before he began this production, Montgomery had worried aloud, “I just directed this play two years ago in Hartford. It’s a real important theater and was a wonderful production, and the show did moderately well,” he said. “But the audience--and that was both black and white theatergoers--felt that the show was dated.”

By the time of the final performances at the Skirball, Montgomery could sit back and savor an array of audible--and visual--triumphs: Each night spontaneous moments erupted onstage to the delight of the actors and crowd. Each night the Foley gags sparkled and wittily underscored the action. Each night audiences rose to their feet with acclaims and thunderous ovations. By closing night, it was clear that the players and the play had reclaimed--and L.A. Theater Works had now forever preserved--the play’s freshness, vibrancy and edge.

“The rhythm of the piece is starting to come through. I wish we could do it one more night,” Montgomery said. “Every night it gets better and better and better and better. It has now become a classic.”

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L.A. Theatre Works’ radio theater recording of “The Colored Museum” airs at 6 p.m. today on KCRW-FM (89.9). The company’s next production, Oscar Wilde’s “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” will be presented May 12-16 at the Skirball Cultural Center. For information, call (310) 827-0889.