Irish wit prevails in Shavian romance

by Peter Filichia/Star-Ledger Staff

Sunday March 16, 2008, 9:47 PM

Engaging Shaw
Where: New Jersey Repertory Company, 179 Broadway, Long Branch
When: Through April 13. Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m.
How much: $35. Call (732) 229-3166 or visit njrep.org.

We've had "Shakespeare in Love," so why not "Shaw in Love"? Actually, the great George Bernard Shaw wouldn't have been happy that his love-life became the subject of a play long after the Bard got his Oscar-winning movie. The Irishman never much cared for Shakespeare.

Theatergoers, though, can be quite happy that John Morogiello got around to spilling the beans in "Engaging Shaw," the engaging comedy at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch.

Actually, a theatergoer's heart sinks as the lights come up. There's a pompous-looking man with a full beard, pince-nez glasses in place, with a ribbon hanging from them. As he orates about the values of socialism, everyone will fear a long night of Shaw's stuffiness.

Pshaw! Morogiello is playing with his playgoers. That man on-stage isn't Shaw, but his pretentious friend, Sidney Webb. How Webb's wife, the elegant and accomplished Beatrice, can stand him is never explained.

But their mutual friend Charlotte suggests that Beatrice is romantically interested in Shaw. Beatrice staunchly denies it, but neither Charlotte nor theatergoers will believe her. Charlotte brings up the subject for another reason: She herself wants to romance Shaw, and must have a clear playing field.

Enter the great author, much as an audience would expect him to be: witty to a fault. Because this is Shaw in 1896, just before he turned 40 (and thus, more than 55 years before his death), Ames Adamson is able to play him as young and zestful. Adamson conveys that the moment Shaw comes in a room, he will always make A Big Entrance. Then he displays an I'm-a-genius assurance as he strolls around Charles Corcoran's modest set with a power that Gulliver must have felt with those little Lilliputians.

What's fortunate is that Morogiello and Adamson don't limit themselves to showing an insufferable egomaniac. He'll succumb, by way of a sterling performance by Katrina Ferguson, to the attractive Charlotte, who radiates confidence -- at least until she offers a maidenly blush and confesses that she's a 40-year-old virgin.

Contrast that to Shaw, who, like his most famous character Henry Higgins, is "a confirmed old bachelor and likely to remain so." However, Morogiello wisely makes Shaw far more passionate about the subject. Adamson isn't shy about saying in no-nonsense terms that if he were to marry, "it would be the biggest defeat of my life."

Just before the first act ends, Adamson drops Shaw's superior sophistication and finds a marvelous way of humanizing him. Ferguson, meanwhile, beautifully demonstrates Charlotte's valiant struggle to not act as a woman intent on trapping her man into marriage. Morogiello keeps matters lofty, and the result is a wonderfully urbane high comedy.

Patricia E. Doherty's glorious period dresses help both Ferguson and Helen Mutch, who makes a refined and appealing Beatrice. Marc Geller, though, reduces Sidney to a cliched twit-Brit, though that may have been just what director Langdon Brown wanted.

Though Morogiello has included genuine quotations from the master, he can write his own epigrams that sound convincingly Shavian, such as "The truth is always terrible."

The truth is hardly that here, for "Engaging Shaw" is so much in the author's voice that it seems to be a play that George Bernard Shaw himself might have written.

'Shaw' proves to be engaging

Tom Chesek • Correspondent, Asbury Park Press • March 19, 2008

As Ames Adamson sees it, the title "Engaging Shaw" can be regarded several different ways.

You might find in it a promise for some time well-spent with the always-engaging George Bernard Shaw. Or it might suggest the act of engaging the legendary Irish playwright, critic, essayist and social activist in conversation — something that probably was best left to professionals.

Take it at face value, and "Engaging Shaw," the comedy by John Morogiello now being staged at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, becomes the story of the famous-but-forever-struggling Shaw, the well-born Charlotte Payne-Townsend — and the frustrating, heartbreaking, downright maddening process by which the two became engaged to be married in 1897.

What it's not is "Shakespeare In Love," that fanciful filmed frolic that sprang pretty
much from the imaginations of its makers. Shaw, Charlotte and their friends Sidney and Beatrice Webb were real people — and as such their words and actions are pretty well documented through journals, speeches and a ton of correspondence. (Shaw was said to write a letter a day just to the actress Ellen Terry.) Playwright Morogiello has done his homework here, to the point of crediting G.B. Shaw as his collaborator; thanks to the many pithy quips, comments and observations taken directly from the master's oratory, articles and letters.

Not to suggest that this is some dry and musty relic — how could it be, when the subject is the self-acknowledged "most brilliant mind in England"? While Shaw is best recalled now as the author of such timelessly potent plays as "Pygmalion" and "Caesar and Cleopatra," when we first meet him in the summer of 1896, he's an already famous — and famously full of himself — commentator on the arts, crusading socialist, advocate for women's rights and vocal vegetarian; a celebrated figure who still has the toughest time getting his bitingly satirical plays produced.

Holed up at the country house of his friends the Webbs (whose Fabian Society championed nonviolent social revolution), Shaw is a blustering man who often comes on like one of the pompous authority figures he skewers in his plays. Appearing here in his seventh major production in Long Branch, the chameleonic Adamson paints a vigorous firebrand who's just entering the middle-age phase of what will be a remarkably long life.

With reams of erudite dialogue to deliver and a staging that largely downplays his gifts for physical business, this indispensable member of the NJ Rep stock company shows us a Shaw who commands center stage in every context, yet seems to be missing a certain something in his life.

That certain something arrives with the crash of a bicycle in the person of Charlotte — and Katrina Ferguson, who originated the role in this play's Vermont premiere, makes a convincing case for Payne-Townsend as a woman who could stand as an equal with this dynamic (and often difficult) man of letters. Under the direction of Langdon Brown, her Charlotte is a person who, although emotionally vulnerable and sexually inexperienced, refuses to accept the peculiarly Shavian head-games she's dealt — and who finds herself taking the initiative in some interesting ways; offering "conventional ideas expressed in unconventional ways."

Performing a crucial Fred-and-Ethel turn to the two leads, Helen Mutch (as the determined socialist and amateur matchmaker Beatrice) and Marc Geller (as the tweedy, lisping Sidney) provide necessary context — and depart the main action all too soon. Geller is an especially welcome comic presence here, with a couple of very funny bits in the play's first act. Special shout-outs are in order also for costumer Pat Doherty, whose intriguing period get-ups add to a portfolio that encompasses more than thirty shows at NJ Rep.

Morogiello has written a script set in "a time when even the average person's verbal
dexterity exceeded the brightest public discourse of today," and his "unromantic romantic comedy" is a warm and funny show that's never meant to condescend in any egghead fashion.

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 1/23/08
By TOM CHESEK • CORRESPONDENT • January 23, 2008

MaConnia Chesser (left) and Zina Camblin star in "And Her Hair Went With Her." (STAFF PHOTO: BOB BIELK)

"You're not my psychologist," a testy customer says to the young hairdresser Angie (Zina Camblin) in "And Her Hair Went With Her," the comedy-drama now onstage at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, of course. Not only are Angie and salon owner Jasmine (MaConnia Chesser) a pair of de facto professional therapists for the loyal (and often freakish) clientele who depend upon their ears and shears, but the two women share a bond that goes beyond their appreciation for the singer Nina Simone.

Directed by Kamilah Forbes and presented without intermission, the modestly scaled play is being touted as a "rolling world premiere," one of several stagings that have been (or will be) produced at theaters across the country. For this engagement, audiences at the Jersey Shore have the added advantage of seeing this material performed by Camblin, the person who wrote it.

As hairdresser Angie also a single mom, struggling student and aspiring author Camblin plays the opinionated, ambitious foil to boss "Jas," a woman of boundless wisdom (even if her tastes often run to "American Idol" and McDonald's) and way more life experience than her intellectually curious, but not always so smart, employee.

In a series of blackout encounters effected with the help of the wigs that line the walls of Charles Corcoran's set, Camblin also takes on the personas of several comically neurotic customers. Among them is Debbie, the actress whose dreams outstrip her dramatic chops, and a very funny turn in the role of Keisha, the BOC (black obsessive-compulsive) who sees a genocidal plot in bus-borne bacteria.

Chesser stands out

Co-star Chesser gets into the multitasking act herself, portraying the white-girl wannabe Chrystal and the "broke-down acting teacher" Miss Bernadette to fine comic effect. It's in her several scenes as Felicia a hardened convict whom Angie interviews as part of a proposed book project that Chesser goes beyond wig-play dressup and into some uncharted territory. Her Felicia is so different from the broad sitcom strokes of her Jasmine that it's like watching two distinctly talented specialists at work. Camblin the playwright may have willed these people into being, and director Forbes may have contributed some crucial insights, but for as long as she's onstage, it's MaConnia Chesser who owns these characters outright.

The best thing that author Camblin has done is to take what could very well have been presented as a series of unrelated sketches or monologues and make a real play out of them. More than just a framing device, the Angie-Jasmine scenes are the true heart of the show, with roots that ultimately run much deeper than the TV-style one-liners.

While the comedy takes more than its share of serious excursions, Camblin is too talented a writer to fall into the Tyler Perry thing sitcom-gag mugging with a little sermonizing medicine shoved down your throat although she's not entirely immune to the didactic know-it-all thing. Her script drops the names you'd expect to hear, from Angela Davis, Ntozake Shange and Lorraine Hansberry, to Bell Hooks, Medgar Evers and Tupac Shakur. Like Angie, Camblin knows all about these people, and so we get to know all that she knows.

And Camblin knows all about Simone, for sure. The music, words and life story of the late great jazz singer play a tremendous part in this play informing all the key relationships, illuminating past histories and just being heard and enjoyed in between the numerous scene changes.

'And Her Hair Went With Her' opens in Long Branch

by Peter Filichia/Star-Ledger Staff

Wednesday January 23, 2008, 5:00 PM

A few times a year, theatergoers discover an exciting new performer. A bit less frequently, they happen upon a promising playwright.

At New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, they're getting both in one person: Zina Camblin, author and star of "And Her Hair Goes with Her."

Camblin portrays Angie, a 2002 college grad who's also a single mother. In the months after graduation, she tries to get a grant so she can write about issues facing black women. To make ends meet, she finds a job as a hair stylist, courtesy of Jasmine (MaConnia Chesser), a big, beautiful woman who owns an urban beauty shop.

The more the two talk, the less they have in common. While Angie ponders her vote for the 2004 election, Jasmine is more concerned about who'll get her vote after the next episode of "American Idol."

Both are rabid fans of Nina Simone, but that doesn't mean much, for each likes the legendary singer for a different reason. Angie appreciates that Simone was an early advocate for social change though her songs "Four Women" and "Young, Gifted, and Black." Jasmine simply likes the sound of her voice.

Camblin excels in making their fights fair. The best moment comes when Angie accuses Jasmine of being "too 1950s" -- which spurs Jasmine to accuse Angie of being "too 1960s." Each decade has its assets and liabilities.

They can't argue all day, though, because customers keep arriving. Theatrical economics demand that Camblin and Chesser keep switching wigs to portray the shop's clients. This allows for a parade of different opinions.

Camblin portrays an obsessive-compulsive who got that way partly in reaction to the racist beliefs that blacks aren't hygienic. Chesser plays a customer who despises a relative who says "chitterlings" instead of "chitlins."

There's more controversy over the hairstyles requested by the clients. Straightened hair, cornrows or braids -- each leads to a discussion about whether the hairdos represent a "confident or uptight, free or enslaved" woman.

Camblin's open-faced curiosity makes her an astonishingly appealing performer. Her Angie is a lovely woman who's strong but never strident. Thanks to Kamilah Forbes' careful direction, she easily morphs into the other characters, and is especially amusing when playing a wannabe actress who courts Jasmine's opinion on her acting ability -- at least until Jasmine gives it.

Chesser is a warm but no-nonsense Jasmine, though her two scenes as a doomed death row prisoner make an equally strong impression. Here the actress becomes a defeated woman who nevertheless won't allow her dignity to be taken away.

The play isn't entirely successful. Camblin creates a gulf between the women that's so wide only an all-too-easy plot device can reconcile them. Many will guess what will happen long before it's revealed.

Still, "And Her Hair Went with Her" makes us want to go with Zina Camblin. Here's hoping she'll soon return to New Jersey with an even better play -- and that she writes a big part for herself.

Angie (Camblin) takes on Debbie, a fledgling actress under a long straight wig, preparing an audition for Ntozake Shange's "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf"; obsessive-compulsive Keisha, armed with sanitizing wipes while bemoaning the threat of fast-food restaurants that are routinely killing off members of the black community; and defiantly manic Denise, apparently unable to hold down a new job for a single day.

Jasmine (Chesser) doubles as Chrystal, a lusty black woman under a blond weave who insists she is really white. And in one of the darker episodes, she plays Phylicia, an imprisoned murderess on death row. A linking narrative finds Jasmine boasting over a pair of tickets to a Nina Simone concert, which is ultimately canceled by the singer's sudden passing, prompting snippets of the late diva's songs.

Camblin's witty writing is incisive and expansive. She speaks knowingly of her subjects, celebrating the joy, pride and humor of the black experience. The humor gains in comic intensity in the person of misfit Denise, while the only cry of pain is found in the brief confessional of the jailed Phylicia, played with somber resignation by Chesser. The character cries out for further development.

Working on Charles Corcoran's set of a functionally mirrored two-chair salon with a black-and-white checkerboard floor, director Kamilah Forbes has given the piece pace and thrust.

Zina Camblin (front) and MaConnia Chesser

The setting is an urban beauty parlor in 2003.  There are two hairdressers:  One is the owner, Jasmine, a middle aged black woman with mainstream attitudes who seems content with her place in the societal scheme; working for and with her is Angie, a young black woman who majors in women's studies and is raising a five year old daughter by herself.  Angie, inspired by her studies (particularly those of Angela Davis), expresses radical fervor and regards the seemingly apolitical Jasmine as ignorant.  She and we should know better.

This deft two-hander features MaConnia Chesser as Jasmine and author-actor Zina Camblin as Angie.  Additionally, each of the two limns three additional black women.  Five are customers of the beauty shop, and the sixth is a convict on death row whom Angie visits and interviews for a book project.  The persona and music of jazz singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone plays a major role in the discussions and events depicted by the author (a scheduled Nina Simone concert central to the plot is an authorial invention).

MaConnia Chesser is a joy as the sassy and happy to be alive Jasmine.    Her other portrayals are Miss Bernadette, an acting teacher whose once promising stage and screen career has gone south apparently along with her sanity; Chrystal, the blonde who has considered herself white since a sadly believable behavior by her third grade teacher; and, most tellingly, Phylicia, a dominant, mannish lesbian on death row, who has much to teach Angie about racial sisterhood both on the inside and outside.

Camblin delights and charms us by portraying Angie with the bouncy enthusiasm and surety of youth.  There is much humor and truth in her portrayals of Debbie, an aspiring actress, who lacks any depth or insight; Keisha, a germ phobic crazy lady; and, most cuttingly, Denise, a lazy, uncommitted worker who does not see the link between her poor work ethic and her inability to keep a job.  Very funny stuff (particularly the latter) redeemed from caricature by the realization that these ladies are really out and about in the world.

While there is much here that we have seen portrayed in plays, movies and stand up comedy venues, Camblin has arranged her materials in such a coherent and entertaining fashion as to give the material new life.  Additionally, you may well find yourself wanting to find out more about Nina Simone and her music, and the plays of Lorraine Hansberry and Ntozake Shange.

Kamilah Forbes has directed with energy and insight.  Some climactic moments are overemphatic for the intimate space, but this is a mere quibble.  An excellent touch is having Jasmine and Angie performing various salon chores between scenes.  Credit Charles Corcoran with the excellent, evocative black and white set with professional beauty salon chairs, large, artfully designed lightbulb-surrounded mirrors, a tiled black and white floor, and white side walls into which are built display cases in which wigs have been placed.  Corcoran (with the assistance of lighting designer Jill Nagle) has artfully designed the display cases to appear to be closed in by glass.  When Chesser and Camblin begin to don the wigs that they wear for their multiple roles, they reach directly into the display case delightfully breaking the illusion.

Notably, And Her Hair Came With Her kicks off New Jersey Repertory's 10th season.  It is its 60 production, and 55th new play.  It is also an initiative of the National New Play Network, a consortium of theatres in which member theatres produce their own productions of new work in "rolling world premiere" productions.

And Her Hair Went With Her deftly combines light entertainment with heart warming lessons in African-American sisterhood.

LETTING HER "HAIR" DOWN

Actress/playwright wears many wigs at NJ Rep

Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 1/18/08

BY TOM CHESEK
CORRESPONDENT

"Only her hairdresser knows for sure."

It's a bit of common folk wisdom that's been handed down — as folk wisdom often is — from the golden age of Madison Avenue. Still, to playwright Zina Camblin, that vaguely remembered ad slogan might go a long way toward describing the bond between a neighborhood hair stylist and her loyal clientele.

"Our stylist sees us for who we are — without wigs and makeup; without the face we show to the rest of the world," the actor and author says after a busy wig-fitting session in Long Branch. She adds that for many women in the black community, the local beauty shop is "a powerful place — a place where we can let our hair down, so to speak."

The Cincinnati native is wigging out in Long Branch as part of the preparation for "And Her Hair Went With Her," a new production of her two-actress play that inaugurates a monthlong engagement at New Jersey Repertory Company. As one of the "rolling world premiere" productions arranged by NJ Rep through the National New Play Network, the 2003 comedy arrives on the Shore stage after having been seen by Indianapolis audiences. From here, it moves on to future "world premiere" productions in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Ah, but the Long Branch run is the one to watch, due in large part to the fact that the playwright also is appearing in the show, playing no less than four roles. Camblin is joined here by co-star MaConnia Chesser under the direction of Kamilah Forbes — a situation that marks the first time the three women have met, let alone worked together. It's also, as the playwright notes, the first time that this material has been directed by a black woman.

When quizzed about the experience of embodying one's own scripted characters, and of entrusting those characters to another person's control, Camblin stresses that "(Kamilah) is great for this show — it's refreshing to give it over to someone with a new vision, a fresh pair of eyes, and I think it's helped me as a writer in the process."

Appearing as Angie, the young assistant to shop owner Jasmine (Chesser), Camblin trades observations on life, relationships and politics. Chesser also multitasks as blond-haired Chrystal as well as several other quirky clients.

Getting into character largely via an array of distinctive wigs, the actors endeavor to bring this insular little world — out of sight and off limits to all but a select few — to vivid life over the course of some 90 intermission-free minutes. It's a world peopled by a parade of personalities who are described variously by their creator as "based on someone I've met," "containing a piece of me" and "coming from some weird recesses of my brain."

"Being a hairdresser is kind of like being a psychologist," says Camblin. In her production notes, she adds that "for a long time in the black community, going to a psychologist, a therapist, was something that black people didn't do. That's for white people."

"But the hair salon is where black people could talk about their lives, and kind of lay their hurtings down."

While the playwright is quick to note that "And Her Hair Went With Her" is "not just about hairstyles," she's equally quick to point out that "it's about the culture, black women and our hair. You can't really separate those two things."

Camblin, who has lobbied to interest Whoopi Goldberg in this script, has found it interesting in her writings that many black women are "going back to straight and blond hair."

"Queen Latifah has straight, long hair," she says of the celebrity who maintains a home in Monmouth County. "I don't see a lot of sistahs with natural hair in the movies and on television."