‘Creek’ an Ambivalent Parody of Slavery

Watching black performers cavorting in humiliating blackface through a succession of outrageous racial stereotypes leaves viewers in a quandary about how to respond. Laugh at their antics because they’re so well-performed? Recoil because they so accurately depict our shameful cultural legacy of slavery?

The ambivalence is intentional in “Uppa Creek,” Zoo District’s raucous, latter-day minstrel show at the Hudson Backstage Theatre. Rather than dramatize the ugly history of American slavery with guilt-drenched yanks at the heartstrings, this edgy staging tackles the subject with nonstop, full-throttle parody.

Inspired by the silhouette etchings of artist Kara Walker, who transforms the paper cutout forms usually associated with innocuous decoration into nightmarish visions of racial oppression, exploitation, and miscegenation, playwright Keli Garrett infuses Walker’s stereotypes with biting self-awareness (“You are about the daftest thing I’ve seen this side of a diaspora”).

With take-no-prisoners performances, the cast serve up a succession of plantation stereotypes exaggerated to painfully comic extremes: the long-suffering Mammy (Erica Bradshaw) spewing buckets of homespun platitudes to justify the status quo, the obsequious, shuffling house slave (Ransford Doherty) and the shapely wet nurse (Tembi Locke), who all become the sexual plaything of their debauched masters.

Adorned in whiteface, the slave owners are even more horrific visions of unbridled lechery and greed. As the tyrannical Massa (Ben Davis) and the alcoholic doctor (Joe Seely) toil to defend all they’ve worked so tirelessly to horde, the womenfolk (Tara Callaghan and Ruthie Frank) fall under a voodoo spell that unleashes their most lascivious impulses.

Director Patrice Pitman Quinn embellishes the piece with hip-hop songs and a seven-piece band (also in blackface), transforming the production into a minstrel show--an inspired stage equivalent to the stark cutouts in Walker’s art.

The show’s unwavering high-energy assault has its limitations, however. It leaves no room for tonal modulation, and some overlong sequences outlive their effectiveness. With material this charged, a little goes a long way.

*

“Uppa Creek,” Hudson Backstage Theatre, 1110 Hudson Ave., Hollywood. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Oct. 28. $20. (323) 769-5674. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.