The finest play I saw in Southern California in 1994 was Jar The Floor at South Coast Repertory, and the heck with the critics who didn't agree. Now, International City Theatre in Long Beach has mounted another production of Cheryl West's wonderful comedy-drama, with a cast the equal of that in Costa Mesa.
West's play deals with four generations of black women meeting to celebrate the 90th birthday of MaDear, who occasionally loses touch with reality but at other times is sharp and perceptive. Her daughter, Lola, is a middle-aged swinger still looking for a good man. Her granddaugher, MayDee, is an uptight university teacher of black history, anxiously waiting to hear if she has been given tenure. MayDee's daughter, Vennie, is a college dropout who wants to go to France to pursue a singing career, against MayDee's objections. Amantha Dymally, Joahn Webb, Peggy Blow and Cee-Cee Harshaw play these four women with strong sincerity, with Dymally in particular portraying MaDear's mood swings and occasional aberrations vividly. Grace Zandarski plays Raisa, Vennie's white girl friend who has had a mastectomy and is open about it -- to the older black women's dismay. All four black women reveal long-held resentments -- even MaDear at 92 -- about how they were treated as children.
The talk is sometimes rough and bawdy but true to life, and the inter-generational conflicts are true of women, and men, of all walks of life. And yet, genuine parental love shows through.
