THEATER REVIEW
“The C.A. Lyons Project”
Grade: C-
7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays. 8 p.m. Fridays-Sundays. 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through March 8. $25-$38. Alliance Theatre, Hertz Stage, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org.
Bottom line: The Kendedas have an off year.
Nicely danced and at times deeply moving, Tsehaye Geralyn Hébert’s “The C.A. Lyons Project” attempts, among many other things, to examine the toll of AIDS on the African-American dance community in the 1980s.
The winner of the 2015 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition and now running on the Alliance Theatre’s Hertz Stage, the play centers on a charismatic choreographer who struggles with the stigma of being both a gay black man and an early victim of AIDS.
That would be the titular C.A. Lyons (James Brown III), the center of a constellation of dancers that includes lovers past and present; a polished ballerina with a poignant home life; and a troubled street kid with a complicated past.
The play purports to be about Lyons and his muse, Amandla Sister Afrikia (Francesca Harper), artistic partners who may bring to mind dance great Alvin Ailey and his protege, Judith Jamison. Yet so many issues nip at the heels (and hearts) of nearly every character that the story too often becomes irredeemably cluttered and choppy.
Thankfully, director Kent Gash assembles an ensemble of seriously good actors and dancers, most of whom are required to summon both skills. So when the story flounders, as it frequently does, choreographer Dell Howlett comes through with a dance vocabulary that speaks to individual styles and personalities.
Rebellious Amandla, born into a family of wealth and privilege, is the Afro-centric diva of the group. She’s a disappointment to her mother (Donna Biscoe) and beloved by her father (Keith Randolph Smith). Bethlehem Dunning (Tiffany Denise Hobbs) is a classical ballerina with a deaf mother (the wonderful Michelle A. Banks) who is intent on giving her daughter the opportunities she never had. Christine Cross (Danielle Deadwyler) — who has adopted the name Chaos Unit — is a feral child who channels all her raw visceral energy into edgy experimental dance. Clyde “Pretty Boy” Wylie (Juel D. Lane), Lyons’ boyfriend, is a rubber-limbed club kid who glides with a dazzling sense of rhythm.
Protean dance maker that he is, Lyons is the one who turns it all into art.
Alas, Hébert insists on packing the tale with every kind of identity issue in the book (sexual, racial, paternal), and the material often feels cliched. We see little emotional connection between Lyons and his lovers, and the notion of parental abandonment is overly labored. That said, the story of Bethlehem and her Mildred Pierce-like mother, who speaks in sign language, is heartbreaking. Hobbs and Banks are extraordinary.
In the end, I found “Lyons Project” to be a fascinating failure. Certainly it’s the only play I can remember where the audience was so befuddled by the end of the first act (a joyous all-white number recalling Ailey’s “Revelation”) that they didn’t know whether to stay or go. Talk about awkward. Turns out it was only intermission; the playwright still had plenty of loose ends to tie up.
On the design side, Jason Sherwood creates a weather-beaten dance studio that can be quickly reconfigured to approximate a variety of settings. Costume designer Dede Ayite knows that nothing becomes a dance maven like a flamboyant outfit. And Liz Lee’s lighting helps tell the story, too. Lane and Harper, it should be pointed out, are important dance figures in their own right. Though we’ve long known that Deadwyler is a gifted actor, turns out she’s quite a mover, too.
In an interview, Hébert says she jotted down ideas for this play for years, throwing pieces of scrap paper into a box. That’s what it feels like, too. Wisps of ideas, unevenly pieced together by dance.
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