Review: THE COLORED MUSEUM at Studio Theatre

It’s hard to imagine the impact George C. Wolfe’s razor-sharp satire “The Colored Museum” must have had when it opened in New York nearly 40 years ago. 

His challenging and pointed series of set-pieces remain powerful in a strong new production that just opened at Studio Theatre; it must have made heads explode in 1986.

The fast-moving production directed by the busy Psalmayene 24 seems a perfect fit with Studio’s renovated Victor Shargai Theatre, remade into a kind of museum itself, with exhibits, photos and small dioramas as people are led to their wooden benches. Then, as in the original production, boxes, doors and curtains reveal creative set pieces for each of the scenes (Natsu Onoda Power is environmental designer). 

And the stakes are drawn high from the very first scene, an invitation to ride on the “Celebrity Slave Ship” through the Middle Passage, and an advisory to buckle one’s shackles on the way — a concept so outrageous it seems edgy a quarter of the way into the 21st century, where it sounds like an offshoot of the entertainments like “Celebrity Family Feud” as it does Celebrity cruise ships. 

The piece, with Ayanna Bria Bakari as a stew named Miss Pat, is enhanced by all manner of artful projections (from Kelly Colburn) too that quickly burn through images of Black history and culture that set the stage for what’s to come. 

Along the way Wolfe comes to skewer the glamorous couples featured in Ebony magazine, where everyone smiles but “nobody says anything meaningful.” In another surreal scene, a woman (Kelli Blackwell) has a debate with the two mannequin heads on which she keeps her wigs — one a full Afro, the other in long strands, on what style would best represent her power. 

A soldier finds a dark solution to the numbers of dead friends he finds in the field; a gay man at a bar imagines the power he has in the snaps of his fingers.

Wolfe, whose impressive credentials include directing the film adaptation of August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” to “Angels in America” and “Topdog/Underdog” on Broadway, saves special scorn for a particular stripe of domestic Black theater of struggle. In the piece titled “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play” is such a sendup of overwrought urban angst in the tradition of “A Raisin in the Sun” pretty soon the cast is fighting over Oscars. 

One of Wolfe’s central points is Black self-identity and whether aspects of rich Black history and culture need to be suppressed or tossed away in order to succeed in White America. In one scene, a man fights with what turns out a youthful version of himself, begging him not to throw away his old albums, his Eldridge Cleaver, his Dashiki, his Afro comb. Similarly, a celebrated singer in France named Lala is haunted by her rural childhood self. 

The vibrant and versatile cast, which also includes Iris Beaumier, William Oliver Watkins and Matthew Elijah Webb (as well as Jabari Exum as a security guard who also plays occasional drums along to the music track) bring a vibrancy to each scene, and an interaction with the audience that includes a lot of direct eye contact. 

The culmination is not a museum piece from decades ago, but a collection of vital questions that still demand answers and consideration, where laughter becomes an appropriate response to the myriad absurdities.

Running time: About 90 minutes, no intermission. 

Photo credit: Ayanna Bria Bakari, top, and, from left, Kelli Blackwell, William Oliver Watkins and Iris Beaumier in “The Colored Museum.” Photo by Teresa Castracane. 

“The Colored Museum” runs through Aug. 11 at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St NW. Tickets available online. 

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