Giving audiences what they want

The touring play “Whatever She Wants” hits a high point when Richard Roundtree’s character goes all Shaft on another cast member, neutralizing the guy in a chokehold. The show scores again when Vivica A. Fox’s character, distrustful of men since her last relationship, indicates the bad breakup was with 50 Cent.

These moments have nothing to do, really, with the story being told, but at Tuesday’s stop in Long Beach, they got a big reaction from an audience clearly familiar with the headliners’ public lives.

The pastiche play -- a drama-with-a-message that also makes abundant use of broad comedy and quiet-storm R&B; music -- tonight reaches the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, where it plays through Saturday. The show carries the names of executive producers Je’Caryous Johnson and Gary Guidry, whose presentations -- including “The Maintenance Man” and “Friends and Lovers” -- play to the audience that made the Tyler Perry movie “Why Did I Get Married?” No. 1 at the box office last weekend.

“Plot” is perhaps too generous a word for the loosey-goosey framework that Johnson and Guidry -- two of the four writers listed in the “story by” and “play script by” credits -- contrive here. The story’s forward momentum gets twisted like a freeway cloverleaf to deliver maximum melodramatic effect. In this larger-than-life world, pretty much anything goes.

Fox portrays the proprietress of the Whatever She Wants Social Club, which has a “good man detector” installed at its entrance to extract vital details about the gentlemen who pass through. Roundtree, as businessman-father to the “Independence Day” costar’s character, warns that no machine can read minds or hearts, but she doesn’t listen. She’s trying to fulfill a market need, including her own, if she ever lets herself take another chance on love.

Her hardened heart is shown in contrast to that of her sister, played by Julie Dickens, who wants to believe that, all evidence to the contrary, the intentions demonstrated by her husband (singer Gary “Lil G” Jenkins) are good -- that the money he steals from her is meant to be invested for their joint benefit.

The impeccably dressed, skyscraper-tall stranger (Boris Kodjoe of Showtime’s “Soul Food”) who materializes at the club might finally be the guy for Fox’s character. Or he might be too good to be true. To find out which, she’s going to have to exercise some faith -- in God and in other people.

Since this is wish-fulfillment theater (Director Johnson makes sure that, at one point or another, the men lose their shirts, to the vocal delight of the women in the audience), here’s wishing the show included a few more full-on vocal numbers for the power-piped Dickens and Lil G.

No matter. Tuesday’s audience shouted approval. Whatever she wants, indeed.

daryl.miller@latimes.com

--

‘Whatever She Wants’

Where: Kodak Theatre, 6801 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: 8 tonight and Friday, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday

Ends: Saturday

Price: $48.50 to $58.50

Contact: (213) 480-3232 or www

Running Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes