“Are y’all ready?! For a spirit-filled, water-baptized, saved
and sanctified, Holy Ghost convocational, multi-denominational, occasionally
Pentecostal, get on the good foot Gospel fest?”
“A Wolf in Snakeskin Shoes”, the follow-up
to last year’s moving “The House That
Will Not Stand”, which has just received its world première at the Tricycle
under director Indhu Rubasingham, looked like a change of direction for
American playwright Marcus Gardley.
A full-throttle farce on the well-worn theme of the Southern preacher (African-American
in this case) nicely broken-up by musical interludes, it opened with an invigorating
Gospel choral anthem which took you straight back to the National’s re-staging
of James Baldwin’s “The Amen Corner”
in 2013. (Both acting leads, Lucian
Msmati and the full-throated Sharon D Clarke, previously appeared in that.)
However, it
shared more with Gardley’s earlier play than was first apparent. Like the New Orleans piece, it was huge fun, melding
camp gags, well-timed slapstick and a range of OTT accents with brio. It was equally well-written, with the
thirty-six-year-old Californian experimenting with verse and proving himself a wizard with words, one of the English-speaking theatrical world’s most
promising newcomers. Although a man was
the focus of the plot, all the best lines, as with ‘House
That Will Not Stand’, went to the women. And as before, it adapted an earlier canonical
work. Whereas the earlier play drew
loose inspiration from ‘The House of
Bernarda Alba’, ‘Wolf in Snakeskin
Shoes’ was more straightforwardly an update of ‘Tartuffe’, Molière’s 1664 satire on religious hypocrisy. Most importantly, both plays shared the same
theme of human cupidity and the corrosive effects of money-worshipping on relationships
and values.
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| Sharon D Clarke's First Lady catches Lucian Msmati's Toof red-handed |
In Gardley’s
version, Tartuffe was ‘Apostle Toof’ (a rumbustiously lecherous Msmati,
complete with “more rings on his fingers than the
pope”) whose two-bit
southern church, run as a business with his wife First Lady (the statuesque
Sharon D Clarke), is about to be foreclosed by the bank. Constitutionally incapable of keeping his
snake in his trousers, but endowed with mysteriously healing hands, Toof (“the preacher who can reach ya and teach ya and beat ya with the book of
truth”) has been caught by First Lady
laying his hands on trailer-trash parishioner Maxine (a super dumb blonde cameo
from Michelle Bonnard).
In a
providential deus ex machina, the
formidable Mother Organdy (over-played to perfection by Angela Wynter),
convinced that “this planet is going to hell in a
fruit basket because women have rights” and
fired up by Toof’s “demonic zeal (that) pulsates my pulse and causes all my pulpy places to perspire”, helicopters in from Hog Jaw,
Tennessee to summon him to heal her son Organdy (Molière’s Orgon), a “fried-chicken-fat shack, check cashing, liquor store and funeral parlor
tycoon” who’s dying
of heart cancer.
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| Ayesha Antoine's Africa (Organdy's daughter), bamboozled by Toof |
Toof somehow
convinces the gullible Organdy he’s cured him and sets about relieving his relations
(fey son Gumper, curvy mistress Peaches and recently-returned-daughter ‘Africa’)
of their inheritance rights.
In a drastic
twist to both Molière’s story and Gardley’s text, Rubasingham’s production let Toof
succeed, but at the cost of losing everything he’s hitherto held dear. The un-performable textual conclusion,
involving a well-timed lightning-bolt, was ditched in favour of this more
unsettling ending, quite at variance with the light-hearted tone of the rest of
the piece. I wasn’t sure the sudden
switch to expressionist seriousness worked, but full marks to Rubasingham
for playing with our expectations.
The troublesome
ending aside, the one-liners zinged past at a rate of knots. Meeting Ayesha Antoine’s ‘Africa’ (“it means she who laughs like the hyena, bathes like the hippo, hunts like
the lioness and walks like the dodo bird”), Michelle Bonner’s maid replies: “O, that’s sweet, Nigeria, but I got
you beat. I’m
Rosarita Dorita Carnita Tortilla Margarita Chiquita Garcia. And I’m American even though I’m 40% tequila
and 60% Mexican”.
Africa’s down-low
brother Gumper (newcomer Karl Queensborough) alternated between bitching (“Are
those flip-flops? Tell me you didn’t hop
half way ‘round the world looking like you sell ass at a truck stop”) and qualified warmth (“Seeing
you will be the icing on a diabetic cupcake”).
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| Brother-and-sister act: Karl Queensborough's Gumper and Ayesha Antoine's Africa |
Motley’s old
school colleague Adjoa Andoh, who must be knocking fifty, did an impressive job
as the ex-poledancer with the heart of gold (“Folks call me Peaches
cause I’m the sweetest thang you ever gone meet”) and almost made you believe such
baroquely convoluted lines as:
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| Adjoa Andoh's Peaches soon realises Lucian Msmati's Toof is "just another man who talks with the muscle 'tween his legs" |
“I am a thick, golden
brown, brick house goddess of voluptuous lusciousness … when God made me She broke the mould, and
put an earthquake in the sway of my hops, a hurricane in the curve of my stride
and a tornado in the whip of my hair.”
Toof’s
ceremonial de-gaying of Gumper, fresh from telling his father how Ricky Martin “bangs”, was another coup-de-theâtre:
“Tonight you become a
man. I rebuke every demon, every spirit,
every sprite, every fairy. I loosen from
your heart every flower, every fruit, every Nancy, Pansy, every Mary … I cast
out ponytails, painted nails and stylish Italian underwear. I speak against booty shorts, muscle tees,
periwinkle, winks and Elton John CDs except The Lion King ... I dispatch angels to feed you a carb, to
catch you up on rugby, to uncross your legs, to make you sit through Saving
Private Ryan and break things for no apparent reason.”
Molière was
probably turning in his grave but one had the sense Gardley had fun writing it
and we certainly had great fun watching it. Motley
spotted new Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell in the audience the night he went,
so this playwright is picking up fans in high places too.