Theater review: Actor’s Express’ ‘Serial Black Face’ overdoes it

Through April 24. 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. $21-$33. Actor's Express (at King Plow Arts Center), 887 W. Marietta St., Atlanta. 404-607-7469, www.actors-express.com.

Bottom line: A melodramatic soap opera, in spite of its solemn historical backdrop.

For better or worse, it's entirely fitting that New York playwright Janine Nabers' "Serial Black Face" would make its world premiere right here in Atlanta, courtesy of artistic director Freddie Ashley's new production for Actor's Express. Of particular relevance and resonance to local audiences, the drama takes place during those few years (1979-1981) in which the city was gripped by the murders of more than 20 black children and young adults.

“Serial Black Face” isn’t a fact-based docudrama about the crimes — and it only briefly touches upon, rather than truly delves into, the impact or implications they have on deeper social conflicts involving class distinction and racial inequality. Instead, the play is the fictionalized account of one hardworking but impoverished single mother in the “projects” of Mechanicsville, whose young son has been missing for months.

In the show’s gritty scenic design (by Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay), his absence literally hangs over the life of Vivian (portrayed at a fever pitch by Tinashe Kajese-Bolden): From a large patch of chain-link above the stage are tangled or dangling relics of his lost childhood (stuffed animals, a toy airplane, a tricycle, a baseball bat).

Between numerous dead-end jobs, Vivian struggles coming to grips with a lot of grim realities. At periodic intervals in the play, fliers in hand, she stops strangers on the street (or turns directly to us), desperately asking if anyone has seen the innocent little boy in the picture.

But, as “Serial Black Face” so melodramatically develops, her son’s disappearance gradually begins to feel like the least of Vivian’s worries. There are possible issues of substance abuse and parental neglect. She meets and marries a mysterious stranger (the solid Gilbert Glenn Brown), whose shady past could be a problem. While away at boarding school, her teenage daughter (a pretty if superficial Imani Guy Duckette) has earned a promiscuous reputation.

With diminishing results, what transpires once the three of them end up living under the same apartment roof (or symbolic playground fence, as it were) is essentially the stuff of much more mundane soap operas. As things go from bad to worse for poor Vivian, the cumulative effect of it all casts a heavy-handed pall over the play that’s occasionally almost laughable (based on reactions from some members of the show’s opening-night audience, and not solely due to the misplaced comic relief of Drea Lewis and Kelli Winans as two of Vivian’s sassy co-workers).

Although Nabers’ historical context is never irrelevant, exactly, it finally seems rather incidental to the rest of her plot. She doesn’t exploit or trivialize it, but neither does she fully correlate any significant connection between the histrionic actions of her fictional characters and the very real events surrounding them.