By Charlene Baldridge | Theater Review
Listed in the 1995 opening night credits of Lynn Nottage’s “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” at New York’s Second Stage, one finds the familiar name Delicia Turner, who acted as production stage manager.
Nearly 20 years later, Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, having since become founding artistic director of Moxie Theatre, returns to the Nottage’s early work, bringing audiences her own maturity, a fine local cast, and a richly detailed period set by Tim Nottage (no relation).
That is not to say Lynn Nottage’s memory play has matured since it was seen at Ashland Shakespeare Festival, or at the Old Globe in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Onlookers may have grown older, but the play remains the play.
Memory plays are difficult to bring off, especially when the most important role is played by a teenage actor. American master Neil Simon discovered that when he wrote his Brooklyn plays. No wonder then, that in 1995 New York Times critic Ben Brantley compared “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” to Simon.
Nonetheless, the Moxie production has much to commend it, and the issues raised are still relevant, sadly. Indeed there are so many that one feels assailed politically and socially at the expense of the human story, a black southern family struggling to deal with grief and achieve closeness, love and goodness in 1950 Brooklyn.
The play is narrated by 17-year-old Ernestine Crump (Jada Temple, a senior at SCPA, San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts). Ernestine is intelligent and fearless in her assessment of society and her place in it. Because of the freewheeling sexuality and Communist sympathies of her recently arrived Aunt Lily Ann Green, the naïve Ernestine professes to be a Communist too. It’s more incipient feminism, but she can’t know that yet. Cashae Monya defines the role of Lily Ann in the breakthrough performance of her career.
Of dubious morality and motives, the sexpot Lily Ann, who gets fired from job after job, descends upon the family unit that consists of the grieving patriarch, Godfrey Crump (Vimel Sephus), and Ernestine’s 15-year-old sibling, Ermina (Deja Fields, a 16-year-old student at SCPA). A baker by trade, Godfrey brought the girls from Pensacola to Brooklyn in search of a better life and, hopefully, personal contact with radio evangelist Father Divine, Godfrey’s self-appointed moral compass. To that end, pops has taken a vow of celibacy, severely tested by Lily Ann.
During a flight from temptation, Godfrey befriends a white woman, German immigrant named Gerte (Jennifer Eve Thorn in the production’s most grounded performance). He weds but does not bed Gerte, who strives to bring harmony to the family.
Throughout the play, and most especially in Ernestine’s denouement speech, Nottage risks exasperating her audience with a surfeit of direct address. At times poetic and affecting, the device is that of a young playwright. Nottage went on to receive a MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellowship and to write “Intimate Apparel” (2003) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Ruined” (2007).
Jennifer Brawn Gittings provides period costumes, Ross Glanc the lighting, and Melanie Chen the sound. Tim Nottage takes the cake however, with his fussy set, flowered wallpaper and don’t-go-there clashing sofa. One could gaze forever at such luscious detail, enhanced by Angelica Ynfante’s properties. Jennifer Berry is choreographer.
At a glance: “Crumbs from the Table of Joy”
When: 8 p.m. Thursdays – Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through March 2
Where: Moxie Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd., Suite N
Tickets: $27
Info: moxietheatre.com or 858-598-7620
