Theater Review - Village people

When mismatched cultures clash in the usual fish-out-of-water scenario, one typically ends up on top. The more homespun, technologically backward hero or community may become the butt of a joke or two, like the way Crocodile Dundee tries to say “G’day” to every person on the streets of New York. Eventually, though, the city slickers grudgingly admit their respect for the country folk. Witness’ barn-raising Amish, for example, ultimately have moral authority over the decadent, violent urban dwellers.

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Essential Theatre’s 2006 Power Play Festival features two tales of time travel — one literal, the other figurative. In the world premiere of Leaving Limbo, Atlanta playwright Valetta Anderson sends a modern-day hip-hop artist back to an African village in the pre-1500s. Meanwhile, Amy and David Sedaris’ The Book of Liz follows a member of a low-tech Amish-style sect as she ventures into the brave new world of strip-mall America.

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Each play finds humor in misunderstandings over science or slang words. In Limbo, a 500-year-old African ghost marvels at the use of a cell phone and exclaims, “Different spirits inhabit that rock!” Each play, however, seeks something more complex than the formulation “city bad, village good.” Liz builds to a few thematic surprises while mostly remaining a light-hearted romp, while Limbo tries to draw a substantial contrast between traditional Nigerian values and the rootlessness of contemporary African-American men. Unfortunately, Limbo seldom lives up to the power of its premise.

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Anderson begins with the engrossing, terrifying spectacle of Africans imprisoned in the hold of a ship, completing their Middle Passage to the new world. We see family members trying to balance a suicidal escape attempt against the prospect of life in bondage. They don’t even realize they’re chained with the man (Ransford Offei) who betrayed their tribe to the slavers.

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When the betrayer dies, he finds himself drawn into limbo, only to become an unseen, spectral witness to the uneventful life of Chuck Wood (Greg Holmes). A ladies’ man and would-be hip-hop artist, Chuck doesn’t do much but try — and fail — to compose a song in memory of his deceased Auntie Em. (Yes, the Wizard of Oz parallel is that overt.) For the first act, Chuck drifts along, keeping women on a string and ignoring the feelings of his worthy friend, Daisy (Cherise Jefferson), until an inexplicable storm transports Chuck and the spirit to 15th-century Nigeria.

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Even as a time traveler, Chuck proves such a passive presence that the playwright doesn’t seem to know what to do with him. In the Igbo village, he spends a bizarre amount of time either sleeping or bedridden. Omu (Yvonne Singh), the village’s respected healer, accuses Chuck of neither understanding nor respecting himself: “Do you know anything about yourself other than your own name?” But Chuck shows few signs that he’s learning anything. There must be hidden depths that never emerge in Holmes’ unfocused performance.

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Leaving Limbo doesn’t take the easy route of making the village a de facto Garden of Eden that shames the permissiveness of today’s society. Chuck sees examples of a closely knit community that honors its elders and traditions, but recoils at the village’s violent superstitions and slave-holding practices, which suggest that the Igbo weren’t free of “original sin.” Nevertheless, Anderson’s dialogue goes in circles and her subplots seldom generate much interest, although Leaving Limbo snaps to attention whenever Singh appears as the formidable Omu.

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Compared to the Igbo, The Book of Liz’s devout “Squeamish” community of Clusterhaven is merely a genial cartoon of religious life. We empathize with Sister Elizabeth (Rachel Craw), who sweats over her prized cheese balls while the patrician Rev. Tollhouse (Alex Van) ignores her efforts. Taken for granted, Sister Elizabeth seeks her fortune in the outside world of tube tops and breakfast burritos.

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You can imagine Amy Sedaris, star and co-creator of “Strangers with Candy,” playing Sister Elizabeth far more broadly than Craw does. It’s something of a relief that Craw makes the woman a sympathetic, gently humorous foil to the kooky characters she encounters, from a dancing Mr. Peanut to a pilgrim-themed restaurant populated by members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Director Lee Nowell sets a snappy pace and gives enough leeway to Topher Payne’s posing, hair-waving Brother Brightbee and Dede Bloodworth’s dithering Sister Butterworth to find huge laughs without going too far over the top.

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In a clever touch worthy of David Sedaris’ best-selling observational memoirs, people “in recovery” prove as fanatical about their 12 steps and higher powers as the Squeamish are about God. Otherwise, The Book of Liz’s inspired silliness turns out to be a little thin, lacking the quantity of wacky confrontations you’d expect from the setup.

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Liz occasionally stops dead for speeches about self-actualization or a tacked-on romantic backstory, and it’s difficult to believe that a pair of hard-boiled hipsters like the Sedaris siblings take their play that seriously. Still, you can appreciate their gesture to make the play more than a series of cheap shots at the Amish and Middle-American kitsch. Like Leaving Limbo, The Book of Liz suggests that the simple life isn’t necessarily superior to the modern world.