THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY – Call it an Afro-disiac, a powerful potion full of energy and Afro-futuristic flare.
After debuting at Theater for the New City, Enough Vo5 For the Universe, Melanie-Maria Goodreaux’s post Afro-futuristic Apocalyptic story, is back for an encore run.
The play, which mixes comedy with poetry and drama with sheer joy and almost painterly direction, is set in the United States in 2097, in a universe where there is a shortage of just about everything, except for drama and humor.
Enough Vo5 for the Universe follows three Black women in a monastic order called the “Solution,” where they put to test W.E. Dubois’ methods of the Talented Tenth by eliminating most of the rest of the world.
What follows is a frequently comic, sometimes dramatic, plot with twists and turns as Theater for the New City’s Cabaret Theater is transformed into not just a stage, but an entire universe.
Tickets are available for the show, which has been extended for a second run March 29 to April 1, at Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave., NY, NY, for $18 and $15 for students and senior citizens at the theater or online by clicking the Tix link.
“This play has been cathartic for me and audience members because it addresses the grief we feel for the continual loss of our men,” Goudreaux said. “It’s also interesting to see how people today react to this omnipotent, controlling black female radical who is putting an end to all that defies her.”
The world of the play transforms the Cabaret Theater into a landscape complete with bridges, futuristic devices and people struggling to survive when so many of the trappings of ordinary life are literally history.
“It’s Mona’s birthday, and the last Black man on Earth has disappeared from the Preservation Chamber in her living room,” Goodreaux said. “And now they are in a death-dealing battle over his mysterious whereabouts.”
The show, a combination of sci-fi settings and characters struggling to survive, is a cautionary tale of reverse racism that deals with themes of loneliness, grief, feminism, and the afro-future.
Written and directed by Goodreaux, the play features Aixa Kendrick, Tiffany Terrell, Linda Greene, Jonathan Duran, Sean Labbe, Anthony Harper and Malik Yoba as God, here described as “Oprah-Obama-Omama.”
The production literally takes audiences on a voyage into a different time with creative staging and situations, showing characters moving through a futuristic universe.
While Black Panther makes its mark on movies, Goodreaux shows us a futuristic world where comedy and compassion rule.
And she does it with style, giving the show a singular sound, look and feel that makes the show a memorable production.
“Some see the symbolism of reverse racism and understand it,” Goodreaux said of a world where tables turn. “Others are on edge but don’t realize that everything that Daniel the White Man suffers is something Black People have endured.”
The play, which imagines injustices if they had been inverted in terms of race, moves forward between comedy and a story that has some serious commentary.
“It’s hard to see a White Man on an auction block, or a slaver speaking about the Middle Passage, or even a public lynching,” Goodreaux added. “The play handles these in a futuristic setting in hopes of showing audiences the effect of such hatred, with a severe warning that we need to come together before we become further divided.”
The play presents its characters and story in a stylized setting that is neither Star Trek nor super heroes, but rather an atmospheric kind of imagined future where characters live in a limbo between nightmare and now.
“The depth this cast is bringing to these lonely characters floors me,” Goodreaux said of this production where scenes often seem to go from tableau to tableau, with a strong visual sense as well as often lyrical, and sometimes hysterically funny, scenes.
Douglas Turner Ward, founder of the Negro Ensemble Theater Company, says Goodreaux “writes with enormous energy and poetic sensibility.”
The show ranges from poetic interludes to comedy and drama, presenting a sci fi story with soul. “Her inventiveness, humor, pathos, lyrical imagery, satirical riffs and social observations abound,” Turner Ward wrote.
Author Sheila Maldonado says “outrageous Black joy defines this play” that has been winning over audiences at TNC.
Enough Vo5 for the Universe, Theater for the New City, 155 1st Ave (btw E9th and E10th) March 22nd-April 1st. Thursday-Sat at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. (212) 254-1109, www.theaterforthenewcity.net