Theater review; Juneteenth production has lots of soulful wit

MARTY ROSEN
Special to The Courier-Journal

For brevity and soulful wit, it would be tough to beat "Tall Tales & Short Sayings," the Juneteenth Legacy Theatre Bold Journeys production playing this weekend in the Victor Jory Lobby at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Clocking in at just under 50 minutes, the play is a zesty retelling of African-American folk tales collected by the seminal Harlem Renaissance figure Zora Neale Hurston in the 1920s. The collection languished unknown for decades before being rediscovered at the Smithsonian Institution and published in 2001 under the title "Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-Tales From the Gulf States."

If director Lorna Littleway's adaptation does nothing more than bring these delightful tales to the attention of readers, it will have done enough. Wry and witty, the tales recounted here are full of bright, irreverent commentary on spirituality, race and gender relationships, and the role of religion in African-American life.

The tales presented here represent only a small portion of the 500 or so found in the book, but the cast - Denzel Edmondson, Alexandra Sweatt, Wanda Johnson-Hall and Joe Monroe - bring this slice to delicious, flamboyant life.

It's easy to imagine some audiences being taken aback by Littleway's direction, which has the cast mugging and rolling their eyes like characters from a minstrel show. But Hurston was a proudly ardent advocate for the rustic dialect in which these tales were originally spoken, and surely she would have approved this production.

Tales dealing with God, heaven, the devil and the foibles of preachers make up this collection. Here's a typical tale: "Why Walk When You Can Ride."

President Warren Harding and a Negro died on the same day. The Negro walked up to the Pearly Gates and asked for admittance. He was asked whether he was walking or riding. When he replied that he was walking, he was told that only riders could be admitted. As he walked back down, he ran into President Harding, also afoot.

"There's no sense going up there," he told the president. "You can't get in unless you're riding." The president suggested a solution: "I'll ride up on your shoulders, and when we get there, I'll tell them I'm riding, and we'll both get in."

When the two arrived at heaven, Harding was asked, "Walking or riding?"

Naturally, he replied that he was riding. "Fine," said the gatekeeper, "hitch your horse outside and come on in."