Fringe, Reviewed: By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
"...debates about race and celebrity that make this an engrossing play."
[ theater ]
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, by Silver Stage Company
Attended: Sat., Sept. 20, 4 p.m., Fleisher Art Memorial, closed Sept. 21
A biting satire on Hollywood, racial identity, celebrity culture, and the people who think they know actors through the movies they make.
WE THINK:
Playwright Lynn Nottage invents a realistic actress stymied by racism in Vera Stark, who works as a maid for star Gloria Mitchell and lands a role as her character's maid in a big movie. Her friends are similarly desperate: Lottie gains weight to play "Mammy" roles and eagerly auditions to play slaves, while Anna Mae passes as Brazilian and hopes to sleep her way to a career. Vera's acting, though, makes her a star in 1934.
Seventy years later, a panel of "experts" debate Vera's relevance and impact, viewing a 1973 talk show clip (enacted live) of Vera. "I played Tilly, a slave bound to her mistress," Stark complains, "and forty years later, I'm bound to Tilly."
Director Tanya Lazar's Philadelphia premiere staging -- given a classy boost by the Fleisher Art Memorial's imposing high walls and stained glass, but hindered by tedious scene changes -- features Kimberly Fairbanks in the title role, surrounded by mostly too-young actors of varying talents. Newton Buchanon and Carlene Pochette shine in two very different roles each, but it's the play's debates about race and celebrity that make this an engrossing play.
Vera Stark wanted to be an actress, not a symbol or the leader of a movement. But after (and because of) the character's mysterious disappearance, she has been adopted as both an early black film success, and as a revolutionary talent limited by racism. Who we are, Nottage implies, isn't decided by us, but by others -- by the effects of our words and deeds on the world.
