`Holiday Heart' Pumps Life Into The Human Condition
Theater review
"Holiday Heart" by Cheryl L. West. Directed by Tazewell Thompson. At Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Center. Tuesdays-Sundays through May 15. 443-2222. -----------------------------------------------------------------
His chosen name is Holiday Heart, though he was born Leroy Zachariah. He makes a living by cramming his big feet into high heels and his linebacker's body into spangled dresses, donning a peroxide blond wig that looks like a Dolly Parton hand-me-down, and lip-syncing to Tina Turner records.
Holiday is also the vivid, enormously lovable hero of Cheryl L. West's new play, "Holiday Heart," and a reason why this tough-love melodrama at Seattle Repertory Theatre proves so engrossing.
Played with flash, dash and a flamboyant nobility by actor Keith Randolph Smith, the outlandish Holiday is on a one-man crusade. He's determined to save 12-year-old Niki (LaShonda Hunt) from despair, and her self-destructive mother, Wanda (Harriett D. Foy) from a descent into the hellish vortex of drug addiction.
Holiday functions as their spiritual adviser, counselor and protector, plus surrogate mother, father and girlfriend when need be. And you root like mad for him to succeed at his mission impossible. Because even though the guy may be more queen than prince, he's always a real mensch.
Keeping up the standard
"Holiday Heart" comes to us after engagements at the Syracuse Stage Company and Cleveland Playhouse, which joined with Seattle Rep to commission it. The Rep production has the same sleek, rather sterile double box set by Ricardo Hernandez, and the same bang-up cast, seen in the other two cities.
West describes the play as a love story. Tazewell Thompson, the production's adroit director, calls it a "wake-up call." Comi-tragedy and "Girlz N the Hood"-style melodrama also fit.
Like West's tough, hilarious "Jar the Floor" (which debuted at Empty Space Theatre in 1991), "Holiday Heart" goes right to the gritty core of a dysfunctional African-American family. But it takes a step further by imagining an alternative domestic unit which, though unorthodox, seems a lot healthier than the biological one.
When Wanda, a bridal-shop clerk and aspiring poet, returns to a long-dormant crack habit, West makes it feel entirely natural for a drag queen to step in and raise Niki. You even swallow (at least part-way) the goodness of Silas (Ron Cephas Jones), a dapper blade who peddles drugs but takes a paternal interest in Niki too.
What sets "Holiday Heart" apart from the spate of coming-of-age stories by black urban filmmakers is the blunt way it challenges homophobia, and its female perspective. Holiday dominates, but young Niki narrates - wryly and poignantly, thanks to West's keen ear and Hunt's winsome performance.
The rites of passage Niki endures aren't about guns and cars and gangs. They're about having your first period with no mom around to ease the embarrassment. And needing to choose between two men vying to be your daddy - when you trust neither.
Earthy and affectionate
To West's credit, and the actors', "Holiday Heart" doesn't treat its wounded characters like sociological specimens. The play yields much earthy, affectionate humor, and some richly nuanced interactions - as when macho Silas and effeminate Holiday begrudgingly acquire mutual respect.
West's approach also can be hamfisted sometimes, and she recycles some cliches of the inner-city-drama subgenre. Though Foy gives Wanda's decline a harrowing immediacy, the script affords too little access into the character's non-junkie side.
And the finale verges on the sensationalistic. These days, an abruptly violent and bleak denouement seems more inevitable than one that keeps people alive and struggling.
"Holiday Heart" doesn't need that final blast to make you feel for, and worry about, the fate of Niki and other "at risk" kids like her. The production makes it nearly impossible not to care, and it ends the Seattle Rep's 1993-'94 season on a note of compassion and concern - if not quite hope.