It’s early on a Saturday morning, but Mama has already had time not just to make stew, but to let it burn when she was momentarily distracted by a noise outside the house — a shot or a tire blowing out, she can’t be sure.
So now Mama is annoyed and stressed, because one way or another, she needs to help feed up to 50 people at a church event later that day.
The titular dish is never far from the whirlwind action in Zora Howard’s new drama, “Stew,” at Walkerspace, even when it’s on the back burner — both figuratively and literally, as Lawrence E. Moten III’s set faithfully reproduces a lower-middle-class kitchen, a little worn but loved. The characters often cut and prep vegetables, and the play highlights the kitchen as a haven in the Tucker family’s life, but also a place where skirmishes erupt.
Mama (Portia) is matriarch and benevolent dictator rolled into one, and her rules must be followed by those who share her domain. They include her two daughters: 17-year-old Nelly (Toni Lachelle Pollitt) and Lillian (Nikkole Salter), who is in her 30s and appears to have moved back, if only temporarily, with her tween daughter, Lil’ Mama (Kristin Dodson), and her son, Junior (who remains unseen, like all the men in the characters’ lives).
Every sign of rebellion is quickly snuffed with a snappy comeback. When Lillian accuses her of always being late, Mama retorts, “I’m always held up is what it is.”
The first half of “Stew” is dominated by comic broad strokes and rapid-fire dialogue as the characters banter with practiced zest. The excellent cast and the director Colette Robert handle the material deftly, but it also wears thin and can verge on caricature. The tone feels a bit too obvious for a production by Page 73, the company that nurtured such distinctive recent offerings as “A Strange Loop” and “Catch as Catch Can.”
And indeed, Howard is up to something.
While the kitchen appears to be where these women reveal their bickering-but-loving true selves, you eventually realize that the hustle and bustle, while obviously heartfelt, also has a performative element — which finds its most striking illustration when Lil’ Mama reveals she’s auditioning for the role of Queen Elizabeth in a school production of “Richard III.”
Acting runs deep in the family, and Lil’ Mama’s female relatives have dabbled in the past. Howard, who is also an actor (she co-wrote and stars in the upcoming feature “Premature”), suggests that acting may be part of what keeps a family together by helping to process conflict and hardship.
Naturally, Mama — “founder and director emeritus of the Mt. Vernon High Dramatic League as well as the first soloist at the Greater Centennial A.M.E. Zion Church, lead pastor Reverend Winston Rice, for the past 15 years” — takes the lead once again, drastically dialing down the theatrics when she coaches her granddaughter through the scene in which Elizabeth mourns her son.
Her emotion comes from somewhere deeper than the High Dramatic League, though — it’s easy to miss the split second when Mama mentions a son who is not around anymore. Howard can be a little heavy-handed when alluding to cycles that keep repeating: the marital frustration, Tucker women getting pregnant at 17.
And then there is that loud noise that took Mama’s attention away from her cooking. The world has encroached on the kitchen. A neglected kettle boils, its whistle piercing ears and hearts.
Stew
Through Feb. 22 at Walkerspace, Manhattan; 866-811-4111, page73.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
