Lynn Nottage's Play at Signature – Variety

After writing two dramatic plays "Sweat" and "Ruined", Lynn Nottage has the right to have a little fun. But while this replay of her new play, "About, Meets Vera Stark," walks and speaks like a ball comedy, she has a real brain in her head.

Before we take too seriously, let's meet Vera Stark. When we see her for the first time in 1933, Vera (Jessica Frances Dukes, in a sparkling show) is a young African American woman trying to break into movies. So far, her closest contact with celebrity has worked as a personal maid for Gloria Mitchell (a very attractive Jeni Barber), a kewpie doll with gold curls, known to her fans as "America's Little Sweetie" Pie ".

Gloria drapes herself into a comfortable bed in a white-and-gold room (Clint Ramos has designed the deliciously vulgar decor) and studies the screenplay for "The Beauty of New Orleans." She is ready to play the leading role of a devouring Southern virgin in this period, the boiler ("magnolia and petticoats") and her imminent screening test give her palpitations.

Gloria queues between two gins of gin, Vera, his maid, who looks like one of those ferocious black-and-white maids that African-American actors inevitably wore in the movies of that time. When she does not take the lines that the little darling of the United States does not stop to take again, Vera asks Gloria to make him audition for "The Belle of New Orleans". There is a role – a real role – for a black actress and Vera is determined to grab it.

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Back at the rooms house where Vera lives with other black actresses who hold day jobs while struggling to break into the movies, Nottage goes from comedy style to ball to realism behind the scenes, and director Kamilah Forbes stands at ease. The comedy is still tasty, but the style is much sharper, like Vera's roommate, Lottie McBride (Heather Alicia Simms, brilliant with gags), laments the limited roles open to color actors – unless, like their other roommate, Anna Mae Simpkins (Carra Patterson, chic), they can pbad for the white.

Lottie speaks of a lifetime of anger and pain, detailing the realities that thinking people think they already know; But hearing them through Notting's strong dialogue and Simms' powerful voice is a real punch in the gut. Nevertheless, Vera persists, thinking that "maybe, just maybe, the times were ready to change." And if not for everyone, at least for Vera, who has what it takes – brains, talent, persistence and something else that can not quite be measured. As one admirer says, "You have a little wit."

After gathering all the characters, including some that we have not met yet, the first act ends on a high comedy note. But the second act, cut and tightened after Second Stage's original production, retains its discordant style change. While Katherine Freer has come up with some fun black-and-white shows that tell us what's going on with "The Beauty of New Orleans," the 1973 and 2003 scenes are disappointing.

Instead of giving us more of what we want, namely Vera and her friends who are trying to defeat the Hollywood system of burying African-American actors in degrading roles, Nottage presents a trio of socio-political critics in the context modern movie forum. While these academics pampered in a fun but tiring way the importance of Vera Stark's "revolutionary" work in "The Beauty of New Orleans," the final scene of this film is projected behind them in all its hilarious glory and grotesque.

This pbadage to satire confirms Notting's cutting point, namely that these talking pompous heads are locked in their own self-defined racial roles. But these one-dimensional parodies are too mean and obvious to offer intellectual illumination or laughter. Boo to the eggheads – bring Vera back!