John Clarence Stewart, Kelly McCreary, Devere Rogers, Journee Rose (obscured by sign), Deanna Reed-Foster, Tamberla Perry and Kristen Ariza (Photo – Cooper Bates)
What do you do when you are part of a company of actors you spent years with, representing a close family in a TV series, and you learn something you don’t want to know about one of them?
By Marilyn Fuss
Playwright Janine Nabers and director Michelle Bossy boldly prompt this question. Perhaps there’s something amiss that you sort of know and don’t want confirmed…perhaps confirmation could affect your emotional AND financial status (loss of residuals from canceled reruns, you know), and you hoped it wasn’t true, anyway?
What if it’s the pater familias at fault, the one who developed the whole show? Just say he’s someone you highly esteem—or once did—and a good part of the world does, too? What, indeed, if in the 1960s that father and an acting partner made the most meaningful kind of history, a Black man and a white one having parity and great comic chemistry on a TV series for three years? Groundbreaking, it was, witty and with-it, so much an idea whose time had come in an era when civil rights were palpable every day. Liberals of all colors got misty over its success and bonded to its stars: the message in the role-modeling was spontaneous and natural. That took place about twenty years before the children spoken of here came on board a new show, seemingly defining how one could be their best: a happy and thoughtful African American household headed by exemplary parents, both professionals.
These are historical facts, also in memory, which contribute to this reconstructed fictional narrative being a tragedy, a proverbial fall from such a revered state.
Alternatively, what if you are relieved that the truth is finally out, that it wasn’t just your imagination or your incapacity to ward off harm on your own? The gaslight can be turned off without dispute as to its brightness, and you can walk into the daylight—when you dare.
This is the perceived plight of the characters in The Peterson Show. No matter which situation, or combination of those situations mentioned above, each actor may be processing—and surely there are still more scenarios—the actor-family introduce themselves throughout this play by drifting gradually into place right in front of us: all five of the children of the series, and the mother.
Before the action begins, there are repeating opening credits on several large monitors of the real TV show theatrically represented here, along with other Black family sitcoms of the ’80s and ’90s. The set’s multi-angled walls, warmly furnished, appear as large as the audience and embrace it with more immediacy than a large TV.
We are at the home of Zoe, one of the older children, represented by Kristen Ariza, whose house, dress, and manner show that she’s leaning hard toward being upper-middle-class. She’s trying to be supportive of her visitor Ronika (Tamberla Perry), one of the other children, who is in survival mode, possibly pregnant, with attendant drug issues—and she’s losing her grip.
Kristen Ariza, Kelly McCreary, and Tamberla Perry (Photo – Cooper Bates)
There is realistic familial interplay and angst, set by the women’s contrasting lifestyles and years of common history, which whisk us in further and quicker than the usher has just done.
After a spell, one of the brothers (Devere Rogers) cavalierly ambles in for some tragicomic relief, offering a flamboyant and welcome touch. There are a healthy number of funny exchanges to lighten the pain we all share. But he is suffering, too.
Another brother (John Clarence Stewart), who works hard like Zoe to keep his life together with high expectations, enters the fray. Additionally, the queen bee arrives: the sister who has remained in the public eye more than any of the rest (Kelly McCreary), naturally the one the others cavil and gossip about in humanly predictable envy.
The gentlewoman Valerie, who plays mother (Deanna Reed-Foster), is also there, enmeshed and visibly caught by her personal goodwill and affection for her TV children versus what appears to be her guilt by association, or knowledge of what has transpired publicly, as dozens and dozens of contemporary allegations have turned into charges, with news coverage and all.
There are flashbacks to dance routines from the show, with Valerie doubling as a coach and caregiver, clearly going well beyond her assigned role. The multiple interactions and repartee among the actors are successful, conveying that they’ve known each other a long time. The Peterson Show‘s entire cast is deft and professional, as all of their extensive resumes indicate.
In the second, shorter act, we hear the star and perpetrator as a calm, sardonic voice-over, along with more flashback, and it’s very difficult not to think of a slave master. Journee Rose appears, naïve and fresh, representing Ronika arriving into her role on set many years before.
Her trauma, encountering the boss behind frosted doors, informs us so that we understand Ronika’s suffering, her stalled life, and the climactic early death of the mother figure, Valerie—an unintentional accomplice to it all.
The Peterson Show Through Oct. 26 Fridays at 8:00 pm, Saturdays at 8:00 pm Sundays at 4:00 pm, Mondays at 8:00 pm Echo Theater Atwater Village Theatre 3269 Casitas Ave Los Angeles, CA 90039
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