As L.P Hartley stated in his novel, “The Go-Between,” “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” In her By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, playwright Lynn Nottage translates the unfamiliar people and events of previous decades by employing modern sensibilities and thus creating a fascinating portrait of America’s cultural, social, and political history. Signature Theater Company, ironically reviving the original Second Stage production from 2011, employs a mix of satire and sharp observation to comment on African-American women’s depiction in popular media and how it affects their self-image.
Vera Stark is an amalgam of every black actress who had to mold herself to fit white perceptions of her sexuality, talent, and intelligence. But instead of a heavy-handed treatise of the evils of discrimination, the two-time Pulitzer winner Nottage delivers a screwball farce skewering reductive racial attitudes. Her hilarious comedy opens in 1933 as Vera is working as a maid-companion for starlet Gloria Mitchell, “America’s sweetie pie.” They are rehearsing lines in Gloria’s gorgeous Hollywood home for a Southern epic with echoes of “Gone with the Wind” and “Imitation of Life” (amazing sets by Clint Ramos and fabulous costumes by Dede M. Ayite).
The first act focuses on the efforts of the two women to land roles in the potentially career-making film. It’s gradually revealed Vera and Gloria are more than just boss and employee; they may be related. Their positions and those of Vera’s roommates Lottie, a talented singer who cannot find a job, and Anna Mae, who passes as Latin American to climb the ladder of fame, symbolize the oppression of women in the entertainment industry. Nottage takes aim at the rampant racism and sexism of the studio system as Vera and her colleagues subject themselves to stereotyping to advance. The second act is a weird double-filtered reconstruction of the title performer’s life as a trio of 2003 pretentious academics dissect a 1973 talk-show featuring an older Vera and Gloria.
Kamilah Forbes’s staging is much broader than Jo Bonney’s 2011 version which works well in the more outrageous sequences such as Vera’s exaggerated impersonation of the white idea of a black servant as she auditions for the movie’s Russian director. Occasionally Forbes pushes too hard and the proceedings become more like a campy SNL skit than a canny commentary. Jessica Frances Dukes miraculously maintains Vera’s humanity through her many transformations. She is always a believable woman—charming, energetic and wily in Act One, still vibrant and no-nonsense in Act Two, though she verges on parody of the song stylings of Lena Horne and Sarah Vaughan. Jenni Barber is riotously funny as the self-absorbed Gloria. Heather Alicia Simms, Carra Patterson, Warner Miller, David Turner, and Manoel Felciano double up in hilarious dual roles in this pointed examination of racial and sexual identity.
