When “Purlie Victorious” opened on Broadway in 1961, the American Civil Rights movement was in its earliest stages, and Purlie’s story of an African American trickster/preacher scheming to reopen his rural Georgia church with antics worthy of “I Love Lucy” must have stuck audiences like thunderbolts wrapped in laughter.
Its current sparkling revival at Houston’s Main Street Theater, “Purlie” sparkles just as brightly, avoiding any scent of moth balls and living up to its subtitle, “A Non-Confederate Romp through the Cotton Patch.”
Ossie Davis’s script conjures up a Purlie who is as titanic as his rhetoric is extravagant — a cross between Black pulpit oratory and the spiel of slippery snake-oil salesman, with the sublimities of the Founding Fathers slathered on top.
The real heart of the script beats in its depiction of a diverse African American community and of a white power structure that resists equality. The various Black characters show their different ways of coping with oppression while the white characters display splits in their response to African American hopes and dreams.
Bringing to life this “romp” is one of Main Street’s most capable casts in many a season. TiMOThY ERiC plays Purlie as a bottomless well of words and a relentless flood of hope all relying on a shallow bucket of schemes he totes, all keeping him so focused that he almost misses his shot at love and happiness. Ever his trickster self stands out, ERiC makes him sympathetic enough to prod audiences to root for him despite his wily ways. The result is a high energy performance that forms the spine of the show.
Krystal Uchem as Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins is Purlie’s comic tool. A young girl he found working as a domestic in Dothan, AL, Purlie has brought her to Georgia to pass herself off as the heir to a $500 inheritance he plans to use to buy his church building. Uchem makes visible Lutiebelle’s mixture of innocence and trepidation about having to appear as a college-educated woman who wears high heels and dresses.
As Gitlow Judson, a seeming “Uncle Tom,” Kendrick “KayB” Brown captures the nuance that goes into appearing to accept the authority of whites and the rightness of the world they control. Small and lithe, Brown keeps adding to the complexity of his character as the play progresses and provides a convincing picture of the self-discipline that enabled African Americans to survive in the Jim Crow South.
As “Aunt” Missy Judson and Idella Landy, Wykesha King and Andrea Boronell-Hunter create two older African American women who epitomize strength and grace. They act as a chorus of common sense, hope, and encouragement as well as a source of love.
Seán Patrick Judge as Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee and Domenico Leona as his son Charlie are the key white figures in the play, and they make their father-son duo a study in contrast. Cap’n towers over his held-in-check son who wants to remain true to his liberal beliefs while not ruffling his father too much. But Judge makes sure that this father has plenty of ruffling material.
James V. Thomas’ set design provides a beautiful log-cabin backdrop that alternates, with minor changes, from the Judson kitchen to the Cotchipee plantation commissary. Its simplicity invokes the time period but also the play’s beliefs in simple justice, simple hopes. Add to this model of restraint Macy Lyne’s realistic costume designs, and the production’s ability to avoid Minstrel Show exaggerations that could have put a hole in the project comes to life on the stage.
Director Errol Anthony Wilks keeps the production walking a narrow line between heavy-handed political satire and “Amos and Andy” race comedy. He ensures the audience will get their entertainment without eliminating or dulling Davis’s social edge.
As our era continues to struggle with racial nationalism and social distrust, “Purlie Victorious” is a ballet of comedy all people can appreciate.
“Purlie Victorious” runs at Houston’s Main Street Theater through Oct. 12.
Robert Donahoo is a professor at Sam Houston State University and writes theater reviews for The Courier.