Do the performing arts have an equivalent to dive bars? If so, Santa Monica’s Promenade Playhouse – tucked in a Third Street crevice next to a soap shop – surely must fit the bill. Lest you think that a condemnation, consider that it’s precisely in such raw threadbare spaces that one finds the greatest potential for surprise. We expect sophisticated theatre from marquee theatres with refined architecture. With dive theatres, we leave ourselves deliciously vulnerable to the genuine risks and rewards of discovery.
Such was the case a few years ago with Small Office, a cozy little cubicle dramedy written by Jeremy Evans – a Second City Conservatory graduate whose credits include performance at major comedy, improvisation, and theatrical venues – that offered a smart, often hilarious portrait of personal office politics. It was ideally suited to the space, authentic and genuine, showcasing skilled performers enacting a script that demonstrates the writer’s craft that led Evans to the semi-finals in the Edward Burns Feature Script Contest.
Fitting, then, that I should return to the Playhouse for Evans’s latest piece, the hour-long musical comedy Tylerr Pery Superstar. This time we find Evans in a satirical mood with a large needle ready to puncture the egomaniacal balloon of Hollywood personalities. The subject is Tyler Perry, of course, whose very name implies a registered trademark, but almost any larger-than-life entertainment impresario will do. An itimate familiarity with the Perry empire is, thankfully, not an absolute prerequisite.
With toe-tapping music by Brandon Kirk, who also co-wrote the lyrics with Evans, the show begins innocently enough with jabs at celebrity arrogance and the hubris of hacks that confuse commercial success with art. But Evans, who also performs in the play to great comic effect, delivers a punchy surprise in a provocative twist that fearlessly ventures into the minefield of race politics. An amusing but conventional satire suddenly becomes a sharp knife of culture commentary that raises questions about race, art, business and the machination of the Hollywood movie machine. Evans is aided immensely by an agile sense of humour that is good-natured and silly (such as when Lorenzo Hunt, who plays the very funny title role on-point, breaks out the Carlton dance Alfonso Ribeiro made (in)famous on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) but also capable of delivering low-brow comedy without seeming crass. It’s in his willingness to be brazen and nuanced in his critical comedy, however, that Evans sets himself apart from gagmongers whose sophistication, based on recent experience in comedy clubs, is typically limited to fat jokes or commentary on body hair and foreign women. The question becomes: Is Tyler Perry the real subject of the satire, or is Evans aiming for a bigger target?
Though the cast is rather rough around the edges and the production shows its low-budget (somebody get Evans and the Playhouse some money for costumes and sets, please), the show is nevertheless infused with an irrepressible energy. Wayne Temple is as much the comic force of nature here as he was in Small Office, playing the non-speaking part of a token white guy with frighteningly uninhibited physicality. Darian Archie, as a character contractually obligated by Tylerr Pery to go perpetually shirtless, gamely goes along with the running gag, stepping out of the role only once to play a fully clothed “Spyke Leigh.” Among the actresses, one would be churlish to single any one out as more compelling than the others.
Music, cast and script all add up to a funny, incisive and smart act of provocation that makes independent theatre all the more worthwhile supporting.
Tylerr Pery Superstar. Script/directed by Evans, music by Kirk, lyrics by Kirk and Evans. On stage Fridays at 8, through Friday, Nov. 22, at the Promenade Playhouse, Santa Monica. See www.tylerrperysuperstar.com for further details.
Frédérik Sisa is the Page's Assistant Editor and Resident Art Critic. He is also a tweeting luddite and occasional blogger, and can be reached at fsisa@thefrontpageonline.com.
