Jan. 19--As the Obama years wind down and the election season heats up, Pearl Cleage's funny and cunning, if occasionally discursive, portrait of an earlier time in black political activism still feels timely. Best of all, "What I Learned in Paris," now in a local premiere with Congo Square Theatre, puts black women's voices and lives in politics front and center. These are not long-suffering helpmates. These are women fighting to understand their own hearts' desires. No more deferred dreams for them.
It's 1973, and Maynard Jackson has just been elected mayor of Atlanta -- the first black man to head the government of a major Southern city. As the play opens at an after-hours victory party, Anne (Kristin Ellis), the wife of longtime Jackson associate J.P. (Darren Jones), tells her friends about a phone call she took from an imperious NBC reporter. He insisted on speaking to Jackson and upon being told repeatedly by Anne that the mayor-elect wasn't available at the moment, responded with "I'm tired of this. Let me talk to a man."
Men talking to men is usually the history of politics and political drama -- but Cleage, who has ably tackled the intersection of race and gender in plays such as "Flyin' West," wants to make sure that we hear what the trio of women at the heart of this five-character play have to say. In Daniel Bryant's nimble staging, they say it with gusto and charm.
In addition to Ellis' Anne, there is also longtime political organizer Lena, played by Alexis J. Rogers as a delectable combination of Valerie Jarrett and classic cinematic wisecracker Thelma Ritter. And there is evergreen bohemian Evie (Shanesia Davis), J.P's first wife who blows back into town from San Francisco with her natural afro and bright caftans, determined to establish a salon for Atlanta's emerging black power players -- something she describes as a cross between Gertrude Stein and Madame C.J. Walker's house in Harlem during that African-American renaissance. The fact that she's buying a house in a white neighborhood for her "vanguard" experiment doesn't sit well with her ex.
J.P., on the short list for a plum job with the Jackson administration, has his own secret to deal with, and his friend John (Ronnel Taylor), has his own reasons for not wanting to help him out. But their hidden agendas are nothing compared to what Evie begins to unspool. "It's not a trick, dear -- it's an opportunity" she tells Lena over one of the many glasses of champagne consumed during the course of the play.
Hints of the 1960s civil rights movement and the toll it took on women like Coretta Scott King and Myrlie Evers come through in Evie's reminiscences of her own fears of losing J.P. during those times. Young Anne, the first in her family to finish her schooling, wrestles with being the chosen partner of a powerful man like J.P. while longing for something else. What's a revolution worth if you can't love and be loved the way you want?
All this plays out with whip-smart dialogue against the backdrop of Andrei Onegin's period-perfect set -- pale-brick walls and bright-orange sunburst wallpaper redolent of 1970s style. Not all the digressions add dramatic heft. Taylor's John in particular doesn't have much to do beyond befuddled comic foil. But as three women at the heart of Cleage's play draw closer together, we see that sisterhood isn't just powerful. It's essential to any movement worth fighting and any life worth living.
"What I Learned in Paris" -- three stars
When: Through Feb. 7
Where: Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Tickets: $37 at 773-935-6875 or www.congosquaretheatre.org
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.
ctc-arts@tribpub.com
