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Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Tyler Perry’s Madea at the Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: ”Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail”
It takes more than a pretty face and a strong set of lungs to fill the Fox Theatre these days. It takes a very large man in a dress, frumpy gray wig and rhinestone glasses.
We aren’t talking Dame Edna, either, although Tyler Perry’s Madea may have the same sex appeal, lumbering carriage and unflappable ego as the fuchsia-haired socialite from Australia. Perry’s creation — a wisecracking, pistol-packing human bulldozer — is in a class of ridiculousness all by herself.
The serial superstar of a string of popular stage comedies and the recent No. 1 box-office film ”Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” Madea has turned Atlanta-based Perry into a cultural phenomenon and earned him a tidy $70 million. There’s every indication that he’s on the path to becoming a brand like P. Diddy or Oprah, supposing he already hasn’t.
If you’re wondering what the excitement is about, tune into the Fox through Sunday to find out.
For when Perry is good, as he was during most of the first half of his Tuesday opening, he is divine.
Say what you want about the formulaic style of the black vaudeville genre known as the chitlin-circuit play. But Perry has devised a foolproof strategy — low comedy laced with local and pop-culture zingers; plenty of gospel and R & B; a couple of hotties with major washboard abs; a clear moral lesson — that has won him an intensely loyal fan base. He knows exactly who his audience is, knows that it’s been long ignored by mainstream show business, and he plays to it shamelessly.
He also smashes every convention in the so-called ”theater.” He breaks up laughing at himself. He stops the narrative to tell latecomers to ”get somewhere and sit the hell down.””(Bravo). He improvises. (”That’s all right. I wrote it. I’ll make something up in a minute.”) In the excitement of his vocalizations, he sometimes confuses things by alternately singing in the chirpy-nasal register of Madea, then gliding into the smooth baritone croonings of Tyler Perry.
In ”Madea Goes to Jail,” the titular character gets locked up for driving violations. In the slammer, she meets Katie (Judy Peterson), a good soul with a history of troubles, and Katie’s snarky daughter, Toni (Anndretta Lyle). Feeling that Toni could use some tough love, Madea takes her home, where she lives with her handsome nephew, Sonny (Christian Keys), and his unfaithful wife, Vanessa (Donna Stewart).
A big part of Madea’s outrageous is the physical schtick, which you often don’t see coming. When Toni smarts off at Madea, the old woman grabs her by the neck and stubs her cigarette out on her head. (Omigod). Once home, Madea breaks out a shopping bag full of belts and says: “I’m going to break you like Sea Biscuit.”
The zingers keep coming, too. Perry has a Rolodex of jokes in his brain, and the more response he gets, the faster it spins. References to ”merican Idol,” ”The Seed of Chucky” and “The Color Purple.” To Maya Angelou (Perry does a killer imitation), Dr. Phil and Eminem. Snellville, all-you-can-eat Asian buffets, Barney, Michael Jackson. …
After the riotous laughter of Act One, though, the show pretty much falls apart in Act Two, when the free-form concert and prayer-meeting begins. But the belting of Madea’s sidekick Ella (Cassi Davis), the successful attorney Wanda (Cheryl Riley) and the newly freed Katie (Peterson) are first rate, and the audience laps up the opportunity to jump to its feet.
A classic example of a brash broad with a soft underside, Madea uses her power to set things on the right course. Love, as they say, conquers all. And because Perry’s shows are always heavy with Sunday morning sermonizing, Jesus conquers all.
Is it just me, or is there something fundamentally weird about a man in a dress, smoking a cigarette, riffing on Bible stories to his latest convert — but getting them all mixed up, as if he’s hallucinating?
At this point, Madea loses me.
But when Madea is pumped up … and riding on a wave of euphoria .. and the jokes are flying by like stop signs, there’s nothing — and I do mean nothing — else like it.
Officer: Arrest this woman, and throw away the key.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday. 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 3 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. $32.50-$47.50. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-817-8700, www.foxtheatre.org.
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