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‘Crumbs’ a first for UNC: Black writer and actors |
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Written by John Bromley
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Thursday, 04 October 2007 |
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 “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” is the University of Northern Colorado’s first production of a play by an African American which also features a cast made up, with one exception, of people of color, all UNC students and each very gifted.
The script is often bitter, a fair reflection of the bitter condition of African-American life in 1950, the year in which the play is set. Shadowed by the McCarthy era, Jim Crow and the threat of mob violence, relieved often by Bird Parker’s sax, the vibrant cinema of the time and set to occasional sounds of bee bop, “Crumbs” is the story of Ernestine Crumb and her family. They have journeyed from Pensacola to Brooklyn to be nearer the presence of Father Divine, the era’s outstanding black preacher who, in a fit of striking immodesty, announced himself as God.
The role of Ernestine is played incandescently by Joya Moore, whose reminisences and reflections light up the stage. Much of what she tells concern her father Godfrey, a widower struggling to find a more meaningful life for himself and his family. Godfrey is played by charismatic Deshawn Mitchell, a sophomore new to the UNC mainstage who aquits himself with memorable distinction. A younger daughter, Ermina, a teen who learns quickly to love boys and despise authority, is Cheerish Martin, a freshman musical theatre major with an extraordinary range of gifts, at one moment endearing and the next sulky.
Perhaps the evening’s most difficult portrayal is Yumarie Morales’ stunning characterization of Ernestine’s Aunt Lily, a strident, semisophisticated Marxist who bears the burdens of racism and poverty with a remarkable range of angry affection. She wants Godfrey, but—like father Divine himself—Godfrey married white, a tall angular girl named Gerta who is played with admirable pathos by Kat Doyle. Lily, Ernestine and Ermina are, it develops, prejudiced againt Germans; that their father has brought home a white woman, and a foreigner at that, is most distressing, especially at school where this rare German creature must be explained.
Guest designer Frank Chavez has mounted this show in an incredible expansion of the usual limits of Norton. There are two playing spaces above the stage, craftily inserted on either side of a ground-level refrigerator. One is the subway on which Godfrey meets Gerta, the other a bench behind which is a vivid, colorful poster of New York.
Liz Porter’s costuming is equally fine: Joya Moore is in a series of starchy white pinafores, wonderfully Southern; Lily first appears in a golden tan and white three-piece suit set off by a black belt and shoes, and Deshawn Mitchell as Godfrey looks as if he has stepped directly out of the Brooks Brothers catalogue. Not an easy show to direct—the script has several clunky moments—director Tracy Salter has mined the show for its more pregnant moments and has nuanced them well. “Crumbs” has high moments, and promises well for the University’s increasingly multicultural future.
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TO GO
“Crumbs from the Table of Joy”
UNC/Norton Theatre
8 p.m., Oct. 5-6, 9-13
2 p.m. , Oct. 7 and 14
Tickets: $8 for students, $17 for public
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