Offscript - Hip to it

Hoping theater gets a hip-hop infusion

The critics split over Sean “P. Diddy” Combs’ Broadway debut in A Raisin in the Sun last week. Some enjoyed the hip-hop entrepreneur’s first stage experience, while others, like the New York Times’ Ben Brantley, called him “smaller than you might expect.” (Either way, it’s a feather in the cap of Atlanta director Kenny Leon.)

But Combs will never be as good an actor as he is a taste-making media mogul, so if he really wants to contribute to live theater, his talents belong behind the scenes. Someone like P. Diddy could orchestrate some cross-pollination between theater and hip-hop, as well as other fresh forms of African-American pop. It’s overdue in Atlanta as much as anywhere else in the country.

Consider two major musical revues coming up in Atlanta’s 2004-2005 season. Theatrical Outfit will stage the Fats Waller show Ain’t Misbehavin’ in January, and in May the Alliance Theatre presents Five Guys Named Moe, an evening of Louis Jordan’s greatest hits. Waller and Jordan have super songbooks, but both plays have been done to death around here: Jomandi staged Moe in 2000 and Misbehavin’ in 2001. Sure, the zoot suits look cool, but how about a showcase of black music from, I dunno, the second half of the 20th century?

I personally suspect that the theater audience could get nostalgic over 1970s funk. Imagine the costume possibilities of a show built around Parliament Funkadelic. (Five Guys Named Bootsy?)

Hip-hop has scarcely touched local theater, despite Atlanta’s vibrant African-American populace. As a pop movement, hip-hop includes not just rap but dance, film, fashion, slang and the aesthetic of “sampling” other musical idioms. New York and the San Francisco Bay Area each have festivals devoted to hip-hop theater, which surely attracts young people — of all ethnicities — to the stage.

Some plays show signs of hip-hop indirectly, like Savion Glover’s street-level treatment of tap dance in Bring in Da Noise, or Crowns’ swirling “remix” of gospel and African song styles. But not since Thom Jones’ urban poetry musical Slam has a local production come close to addressing hip-hop head-on.

I’m surprised that Atlanta hasn’t already seen productions of some hit hip-hop versions of classic plays, such as The Bomb-itty of Errors (a four-man version of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors) or The Seven (Will Power’s version of Seven Against Thebes).

And if Billy Joel and ABBA can provide material for hit musicals, surely hip-hop can do the same. There’s no reason why live theater can’t get crunk every once in a while.

I was punk’d!

When I saw the opening night performance of 7 Stages’ “Master Harold” ... and the boys, the lights came up on a figure in a bowler hat. The following thoughts went through my head quicker than it takes to transcribe them: Isn’t that hat out of character on Michael Anthony Tatmon? Wait, I see his face. That’s not Tatmon, it’s Don Finney! There’s no fourth actor in this play — is he playing a customer in Harold’s tea room? No — he’s doing his role from Waiting for Godot!

And indeed, Finney tugged his shoe and intoned his first lines from Godot, 7 Stages’ previous production, and then Del Hamilton, also in character, rushed in to say a few of his lines. Finney and Hamilton performed an excerpt from Godot at the Inman Park Festival’s “Theatre Al Fresco” that night. On the spur of the moment, they decided to play a brief prank on Harold’s opening night audience, rightly assuming that everyone in the crowd would get the joke, which succeeded delightfully.

But how will 7 Stages top itself next time?

Leaving their comfort zone

You expect the expected from Neighborhood Playhouse and Onstage Atlanta, which often program the kind of unchallenging chestnuts you find at community theaters nationwide. It’s no surprise that later this year Onstage will drag out On Golden Pond, while Neighborhood dusts off Charley’s Aunt. But each theater throws a curve this spring.

Through May 16, Neighborhood stages Anton in Show Business, a pointed theater satire about three actresses’s attempt to stage Chekhov’s Three Sisters. In an ongoing, unsolved mystery of modern theater, pseudonymous playwright Jane Martin is widely believed to be Jon Jory, former director of the envelope-pushing Humana Play Festival, although Jory has denied the charge for years.

Meanwhile, Onstage Atlanta stages Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion!, a Chekhovian dramedy of gay vacationers, from May 7-28, and will present Tony Kushner’s landmark Angels in America: Millennium Approaches next spring. Approaches features a little nudity and Love! quite a lot, which you seldom see at Onstage. The playhouse’s exhibitionism suggests that the full monty doesn’t raise eyebrows like it used to.

The bad news from Onstage is that the playhouse will not offer a full production of the winning entry in its Hometown Playwrights Series this year, citing budget limitations. Onstage artistic director Scott Rousseau says that when the playhouse completes construction of its children’s theater, he expects revenues to rise and the series to return.

curt.holman@creativeloafing.com