Lynn Nottage is one of the finest playwrights of her generation, the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for searing and topical plays such as “Ruined” and “Sweat.” Her finest play may be 2003’s “Intimate Apparel,” about a black seamstress living in a women’s boarding house in early-20th-century New York City — which is begging for a major New York revival.
So it’s puzzling that Off Broadway’s Signature Theatre this season has chosen to revive two of Nottage’s more ephemeral comedies, first “Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine” and now “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark.”
It’s not that there aren’t serious issues of race and media representation embedded in “Vera Stark,” which centers on a maid who becomes an early black film star in golden-age Hollywood, but director Kamilah Forbes’ production manages to exacerbate this over-long show’s weaknesses.
What Nottage has written as satire instead comes off as farce, and scenes meant to send up both outdated performance styles and modern-day academics turn them into broad caricatures that even the director of a Tyler Perry sitcom would ask to tone down a few notches. (Warner Miller, as a foot-stomping and wildly gesticulating professor, is a particular offender.)
Jessica Frances Dukes is appealing but slight as Vera, a character modeled on both Theresa Harris and Hattie McDaniel, who became the first African American to win an Oscar for her role as Mammy in 1939’s “Gone With the Wind.”
Jenni Barber has the hauteur as Gloria Mitchell, the white movie star whom Vera has known from childhood who is both her employer and, later, co-star.
But except in the forward-jumping and highly meta second act, when they re-create a joint interview on a 1970s TV show after their Hollywood careers have petered out, neither manages to ground their performance in a way that feels true to the era, to the medium in which they’re working or to the thrust of the play and its message about the perhaps necessary compromises artists must make just to get work.
And alas, neither holds up to Jo Bonney’s original production, staged just eight years ago at Second Stage, which starred an actual movie star, Sanaa Lathan, as Vera, playing opposite the remarkable Stephanie J. Block.
“Vera Stark” has some timely things to say about the challenges facing black artists in classic Hollywood — but it presents a tonal challenge to even the most talented companies that this production can’t quite meet.
10 Best Theater Productions of 2018, From 'Ferryman' to 'Bernhardt/Hamlet' (Photos)
TheWrap theater critic Robert Hofler picks the best stage productions of the year.
10. "Bernhardt/Hamlet," by Theresa Rebeck (Broadway, Roundabout)
Sarah Bernhardt wants it all and gets it in Rebeck's grand comedy about the greatest feat of cross-dressing in the theater.
9. "Pass Over," by Antoinette Nwandu (Off Broadway, Lincoln Center Theater)
The inescapable prison of "Waiting for Godot" is turned into a Chicago street corner that two men can't escape except through death.
8. "The Ferryman," by Jez Butterworth (Broadway)
The author of "Jerusalem" borrows effectively from Friel, Steinbeck, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Riverdance in his look back at a Northern Ireland that even Margaret Thatcher would applaud. How this play will perform in Ireland, if it ever gets there, is anyone's guess.
7. "Downstairs," by Theresa Rebeck (Off Broadway, Primary Stages)
Demons lurk upstairs, as well as in the basement, where an emotionally unstable man has taken up unexpected residence in his sister's house. This thriller gets scary long before you even realize it's a thriller.
6. "Dance Nation," by Clare Barron (Off Broadway, Playwrights Horizons)
Young girls and one boy in a dance competition grow up but never leave their adolescence behind in this poignant comedy. There's nothing trivial about being 13 years old. In fact, there's nothing worse.
5. "Queens," by Martyna Majok (Off Broadway, Lincoln Center Theater)
Taking up temporary residence in a Queens, N.Y., basement, two generations of immigrant women learn lessons of survival and Americanization in this sweeping saga of hope and desperation.
4. "Skintight," by Joshua Harmon (Off Broadway, Roundabout Theatre Company)
Coping with rage after her husband's dumps her for a much younger woman, a middle-aged woman finds little comfort from a father who's about to marry a much, much younger man. Arguably the most underrated new play of the year.
3. "The House That Will Not Stand," by Marcus Gardley (Off Broadway, New York Theatre Workshop)
Gabriel Garcia Lorca tangles with Charles Ludlam in this brilliant retelling of "The House of Bernard Alba," set in a New Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase.
2. "The Low Road," Bruce Norris (Off Broadway, Public Theater)
A foundling in the 18th century teaches us much about unbridled capitalism. This sprawling picaresque tale takes unexpected detours to a G8 summit as well as a sci-fi movie.
1. "Hangmen," by Martin McDonagh (Off Broadway, Atlantic Theatre Company)
The abolition of the death penalty in the U.K. doesn't prevent a retired executioner from taking one more life.
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TheWrap’s Best & Worst 2018: Visionary directors delivered amazing revivals of ”My Fair Lady,“ ”Oklahoma!“ and ”Three Tall Women,“ but great new plays dominated this year
TheWrap theater critic Robert Hofler picks the best stage productions of the year.
