By the time the first 30 minutes of Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice goes by, there’s still a lingering curiosity about how the play might come together. The plot almost doesn’t matter for a while, but rather we’re drawn into a tapestry of character.
We know there’s a choir, described as “a shapeshifting clutch of at least 3 women; strong singers (Alto/Mezzo/Soprano), white presenting.” There’s Meek, a 10-year-old Black girl; her father, Smooch, a former Black Panther; and Puddin, Meek’s “heedful” grandmother—all of whom live together. The theatrical puzzle continues to reveal itself piece after piece as new characters like Clay, Smooch’s brother and a Black Republican with an important position in Reagan’s Cabinet and Smooch’s wife, Virgie, an ambitious professional who is for some strange reason stuck in a sunken place, enter the world Reddick has built.
It’s Meek (played by the astute Alana Raquel Bowers) and the comforting, Hallmark-picturesque presence of the choir trio (Suzzy Roche, Grace McLean, and Nina Grollman) first drawing us into that world. Together, they launch the show into something playful where our inner child and grown selves work to unlock how plots might intertwine. And intertwine they do: All Meek wants for Christmas is a Pound Puppy, a Speak & Spell, and a nuclear radiation detector. The latter is especially important for the fallout shelter she’s building. But she isn’t asking out of despair; Meek is hopeful the conflict will be resolved peacefully, namely through the local children’s choir she’s part of. Her father isn’t as optimistic as he struggles to keep the family business—a skating rink—afloat. In the meantime, Clay is working to advise President Reagan on a resolution, and just when he’s about to head to Washington for a summit, Virgie falls under a catatonic spell. At the same time that the Soviet Union is interfering with Meek’s Speak & Spell toy, Virgie is under so much duress that Clay has no choice, but to bring her to his estranged family’s home in Syracuse. Political and personal problems settle in this house. Then the fun ensues.
I’m hesitant to call this an absurdist comedy with music, because it is no more absurd than the premise of war itself. Today, we’re on the brink of our own man-made (and I mean man in a very patriarchal sense) disaster yet again. We’re warned that it’s not just bombs, but cyberattacks that will change the very nature of our day-to-day life. And a cyber-attack through a Speak & Spell is exactly how the Soviet Union is able to access Meek in the first place.
Under Knud Adams’ artful direction and Baye & Asa’s creative movement, the choir gracefully embody more tertiary characters from a Soviet spy to a TV show guest. No movement is off-limits as McLean hides in plain sight against the wall in a campy covert pose, or the choir suddenly transforms into a bathroom stall.
Scenic designer Afsoon Pajoufar creates a mesmerizing set where the cast flit, float, and flee. Music director Ellen Winter leads us through catchy lyrics and captivating vocal arrangements, too. All these pieces together create a feel-good campy production, all on the brink of a Cold War.
While the brothers settle their family feud, it’s women who turn fate around as Puddin (Lizan Mitchell, who shines as always!) and Virgie (Mallory Portnoy, a sharp comic) race to put their heads together to divert an explosive situation. And then finally, Meek makes history, leading the warring countries to peace after all. Who knew the war could be saved by a Black girl from Syracuse, New York during Christmas time in December 1987? Reddick knew.
But just fifteen years before Cold War Choir Practice is set—five years before Meek was born, when Smooch (smoothly played by Will Cobbs) was likely still a Black Panther —there was another woman, a Black girl from New York, who interrupted politics, too. Shirley Chisholm became the first Black person to run for President and almost, just almost, won the Democratic nomination in 1972. Meek may be too jaded to see herself at the White House, and certainly, if involved in politics at all, it’d be in a very different way from her Uncle Clay. This year, Meek would be 38 years old, and I imagine her somewhere in Syracuse or Brooklyn with strong ties to the community, leading the community board; or maybe she’s off the grid, uninterested in how unkind the world can be. Regardless, Meek is unbothered, meaning she isn’t distracted by the power of it all; and unbossed, just like her 10-year-old self that could sneak away into the woods without an adult noticing otherwise. To be clear, this is not a play about how a Black girl saves the world. There’s not enough reparations in the universe to pull off that trick. (Yet we certainly do need the Meeks, the Shirleys, the Puddins…) But Reddick’s clever, deeply imaginative, dark comedy is a gentle reminder that we, too, can intervene, even on the most basic, sometimes accidental level, in the face of hard times.
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Cold War Choir Practice is now running as a part of Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks festival through July 1.
