Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

You go into the usual jukebox musical probably somewhat familiar with the song catalogue that will be the source of the score. I was never an ABBA fan, but I could appreciate how Mamma Mia re-purposed their songs to serve its unpersuasive plot.

Not being familiar with the catalogue of songwriter Sia, I didn’t experience a similar jolt of her work being re-purposed when I saw Saturday Church at the New York Theater Workshop. All I could do was react to the effectiveness of the songs supporting the characters and/or the story. Though the energy and the harmonies of the numbers engaged me, to my taste they fell short of what musical theater songs are supposed to do.

Musical theater songs and pop songs are usually very different things. Pop songs are most often blasts of feelings articulated, explained, celebrated. Musical theater songs are intended to do something different. Dramatic material is generally most effective not because of what is overtly said but because of what it leads the audience to understand or believe. To put it simply – pop songs are generally explicit, musical theater songs are usually implicit. This is why pops songs rarely make good theater songs.

But, as I say, though the songs didn’t work particularly well for me as dramatic material, the performances and the staging were enough for me to be glad to be in the house. It’s when the characters shifted to dialogue that I thought the show ran into trouble.

The show is about a young gay Black man named Ulysses who, blocked from singing in his Sunday church choir because his affect is too extravagant. He meets a street hustler who takes him to a church that meets on Saturdays (hence the title). This church embraces both spirituality and being who you are or what you choose to be, which makes for a congregation mostly drawn from the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Ulysses’ mother and aunt go to the Sunday church, but he feels more at home with his Saturday crowd. Inevitably, his family discovers the part of himself he has tried to keep hidden from them. This sets up the central conflict of the show.

I haven’t seen the feature film written and directed by Damon Cardasis on which this is based, so I don’t know how many of my problems with the play’s script originate in it. But I do indeed have problems with the book of this show, which Cardasis co-wrote with James Ijames (the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of Fat Ham). As soon as the premise of any given scene was set up, I found I anticipated almost everything the characters would say pretty much word-for-word. This struck me as tedious.

It also doesn’t help that the leading character, Ulysses, is the least interesting of the major characters. Mostly he sulks and suffers and complains in contrast to pretty much everyone else on the stage, including his aunt, who is the closest thing the show has to a villain. What does help is that the cast includes two dynamic Tony Award winners – Joaquina Kalukango as the aunt and J. Harrison Ghee – who both bring presence and vitality to their roles (Ghee has two roles – a mild-mannered minister and Jesus, here Black and flamboyant).

There was enough rousing music and acrobatic dancing to keep me engaged with Saturday Church, but the book kept it from working as well as it might.

I got my first taste of Mexodus via Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater. I was a resident writer at Victory Gardens for decades. As the pandemic receded, I was called to Chicago to participate in an event we all hoped would trigger the renewal of our company. Some of the other resident writers and I, along with S. Epatha Merkerson, gathered in a fancy event room to offer a show of support to the new artistic director, Ken-Matt Martin. Part of the evening included a taste of a project Victory Gardens was helping to develop that Ken-Matt intended to premiere there. The sample, written and performed by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, left me eager to hear more.

The show ended up not premiering there. Ken-Matt (whom I liked a lot and with whom I was planning to work) was fired by the board on dubious grounds, and Victory Gardens went into a tailspin and stopped producing.

But the project was too good to be kept down.

Set in 1851, Mexodus is about a slave in Texas named Henry who, having killed his master in self-defense, escapes to Mexico. There he is found half-dead by a Mexican farmer named Carlos who nurses him back to health. When a storm threatens Carlos’s farm, Henry in turn is able to rescue him. And when some men hunting Henry show up, Carlos helps his new friend elude them and move on to a life beyond their reach.

That, in brief, is the story. Part of what is intriguing is that, though fictional, the story has some basis in fact. Something like 10,000 slaves found their freedom by fleeing to Mexico. Yes, that was news to me, too.

The show is about two men – Henry and Carlos – who join forces. But the show is as much about two men – Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson – who join forces to tell the story of Henry and Carlos. Quijada and Robinson not only co-wrote the show, they play the characters and they play a variety of musical instruments — guitars, drums keyboards, even a trumpet. The score makes use of looping technology and part of the show’s excitement is watching the two performers layer rhythms and melodic fragments into rich arrangements to which they add singing and rapping. It’s a dazzling display of talent in the service of telling us a story that surprises via a style of presentation that also surprises. David Mendizábal is the resourceful director. Supposedly Mexodus is only scheduled for a limited run, but I expect someone will be smart enough to take it to another appropriate space, say New World Stage on 50th Street. It is easily the most exciting show I’ve seen so far in this young season.

I’m going to guess that neither Saturday Church and Mexodus would be welcome at the current incarnation of the Kennedy Center.

Another thought occurs to me. Mexodus is being presented under the auspices of Audible, the company that offers audio books and drama to its members. Audible was purchased a few years back by Amazon. Amazon’s founder and major share-holder is Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos lately has been lending his support to Donald Trump. Donald Trump has taken over the Kennedy Center.

Hunh.