Divided family members interact at a funeral in Chicken & Biscuits. The corpse, a family leader and pastor of a Black Church, will be given “a celebration of life”—but not before his relatives cure what’s been deadly in their relationships. Douglas Lyons says, unlike most other Black playwrights, he’s had a “right to be silly” in this “universal” work. Silly is indeed what this play is. Also, universally stereotypical.
Rather than being new and different, the play seems like the last and thus extended segment of a last century’s TV show like “The Jeffersons.” It progresses in “bits” like serial chapters. The essential one shows the deceased pastor’s bossy, successful daughter Baneatta (well-cast Tracey Conyer Lee) and her husband Reginald (LaShawn Banks, likeable to dynamic), the new pastor initiating the funeral.
Each character introduction or clash is a bit or scene. One of the first and longest introduces the bawdy Beverley (rightly tacky Jasmine Rush), getting ready for church in a sequined black gown that bares much of her breasts. So she won’t talk to herself, her kid La’Trice (Dreaa Kay Baudy, wasted) smart-alecks her. Of course, there’ll be a clash scene between Beverly and sister Baneatta Mabry. The most “neutral” of the women may be Brianna Jenkins (Candice McKoy). The “kids,” however, have bigger bits. Kenny Mabry, an actor, has brought along his gay partner (effective Dean Linnard as actor Logan Leibowitz, a Jew who knows little about his Bible or seemingly much else). Kenny has a strong self-defining bit and actor Rasell Holt makes the most of it.
The highest achiever of the Mabrys is young Simone, but she loses in her clash with Kenny. She didn’t like Logan because she just suffered a broken romance since her lover left her for a white woman. (Imani Lee Williams does win ultimate pity for Simone.)
There’s an incantatory introductory ritual that precedes the appearance of Mystery Guest, whose i.d. (both as character and actress) one has to guess. But there’s no mystery about the final star of the show. It’s La Shawn Banks’s Pastor Reginald Mabry, downstage center clamoring at the imagined casket in the pit for a complete scene of umpteen minutes and unrestrained enthusiasm.
Director Bianca LaVerne Jones has handled well the job of blocking the entire show, since it’s so cut up into bits. She’s also enabled a few of the actors to achieve a little beyond their stereotypes. Much help comes from the set designer and especially Asolo Rep’s tech production crew’s creation of the basic three-part set.
Projections on a central “stained glass” window support the dramatic “Blackness” of the play. Lighting and costumes are excellent. Mightily overdone, however, is the sound system, apparently made by a professional firm. Unlike the play’s title, it doesn’t go down well as does a typical treat served at a big family meeting.
