Friday, May 15, 2009

Review: Pruitt Taylor Vince and Kalah Roberts are Blackbird at the LSUS Black Box Theater this weekend

Hollywood veteran Pruitt Taylor Vince offered the audience his abject contrition, pride, wrath, bewilderment and lust on Thursday night in the LSUS Black Box Theater. Vince played a man who has tasted the forbidden fruit; he has wallowed in the love offered by a busty 12 year-old.

The play being performed in the intimate space in Bronson Hall is the award-winning drama Blackbird. The character played by Vince has paid for his transgression with some 4 years in prison.

Across the table from Vince was actress Kalah Roberts. She played the young woman whose life has been helter-skelter since the dalliance.

Years after the incident, after his prison term, she has located her man. She confronts him in his office. Beneath her ambiguous, beguiling smile and relentless focus is a desperately labyrinthine mind.

Roberts' voice was cool, clear and had rhythmic strength equal to her fencing partner, Vince, on Thursday night.

This is not a shrill confrontation. The struggle here is portrayed by the saliva of desperation, the grip of torturous connection and a series of blinking, head-shaking reverses.

Blackbird represents another success for the creative team of Vince and Robert Alford, co-director of the production, This also marks the introduction of another capable player in the Black Box ensemble, Centenary graduate Kalah Roberts.

She joins a group of recent college grads who are hot for the stage. Jennifer Lynn Warren, James Palmer, Jamie Norwood, Kelly Mills, Nicki Daniels, Angela Harris and Nikai Clark are among the twenty-something players who have thrown themselves into a series of mostly edgy productions at LSUS.

Be aware that Blackbird, about 100 minutes with no intermission, is sexually graphic.

May 14-16 at 8 pm; Sun, May 17 at 3 pm.
$18 at the door.
$15 (318) 797-5386 or theatre@lsus.edu.
$10 students, educators, senior citizens, military personnel and groups of five or more.

1 comment:

Crystal Tatum said...

The play was great! Well acted and intense.