THEATER REVIEW
“Born for This: The BeBe Winans Story”
Grade: C
Through May 15. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays; 7:30 p.m. Sundays. $20-$75. Alliance Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, www.alliancetheatre.org.
Bottom line: Some fine singing, but little more.
It probably goes without saying that the Alliance Theatre's world-premiere musical "Born for This: The BeBe Winans Story" is filled with a lot of rousing and uplifting production numbers. It is, after all, by and about the renowned R&B singer, co-written by Winans and director Charles Randolph-Wright. And, besides the occasional well-known spiritual ("Blessed Assurance") or "sanctified" pop-song cover ("Up Where We Belong"), it mostly features a score of some two dozen original tunes by Winans.
As a very interesting or insightful biography, though, “Born for This” routinely skims over his life and career. He and his sister, CeCe, two of 10 children from a close-knit black family in Detroit, are first “discovered” on cable TV in the early 1980s, when they’re essentially hired by former televangelists and “crazy Caucasians” Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker to integrate the chorus of their glorified variety show, “The PTL (Praise the Lord) Club.”
Almost before they realize it, BeBe and CeCe are signing lucrative record deals, scheduling international concert tours and befriending superstar celebrities such as Whitney Houston. Eventually, the two of them diverge on separate paths, personally as well as professionally.
The nepotistic casting of Juan Winans and Deborah Joy Winans, the nephew and niece of the people they’re playing, somewhat risks making “Born for This” feel like more of a so-called “vanity project” than it otherwise might. To be sure, their vocal talents are very much in keeping with and continuing a gifted family tradition — which also includes four of BeBe and CeCe’s other siblings, performing as the gospel group the Winans Brothers — but their acting abilities are mainly marginal.
(Too often, for that matter, so are their characters. Doting on Whitney is extraneous enough, but the script also devotes entirely too much time and attention to the buffoonish Bakkers, mimicked here by Chaz Pofahl and Kirsten Wyatt.)
Meanwhile, Nita Whitaker and Milton Craig Nealy offer splendid support as the Mom and Pop of the family. Their scenes together (both dramatic and comedic) are knowingly portrayed, and their musical moments provide a few highlights: Whitaker’s soulful solo “Seventh Son,” and Nealy’s energized lead on the ensemble number “I Got a New Home,” and his duet (with BeBe) of the title tune.
Another showstopper belongs to Kiandra Richardson's Whitney, the invigorating "Applause." The gist of the song is that everyone wants and deserves a little applause, that they just shouldn't live for it. Still, in a way, it basically illustrates how "Born for This" — a co-production with Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage — does live for applause. Why else introduce the peripheral character of Whitney Houston, if not to give her a big crowd-pleasing solo?
By comparison, some of the internal family friction behind the music develops like fleeting afterthoughts. Out of nowhere, CeCe meets and marries an older man. All of a sudden, those other Winans Brothers express jealousy and bitterness about the more popular success of their younger siblings, whose “crossover” appeal they consider a form of selling out.
In the end, curiously enough, telling a faith-based story as a bit of splashy Broadway-style musical theater could be tantamount to the same thing.
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