"The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes" by Vivian J. O. Barns is a world premiere. The ostensible story-line begins with a 6 member crew of an unnamed college's halftime dance team and their interactions as they prepare for the big homecoming halftime show. And knowing this is the last thing about the play that makes face-value sense. From nearly the first minute of the play, characters start disappearing (the first two in reference only as they are named but never seen). Paranormal shit starts to happen, eventually even Hell opens up, literally, to reveal the lives of the dead. Along the way there is wedge of snarky fun, a hint or two at more serious topics, and halftime show that is finally performed by the only remaining member who announces at the end that it was all for nothing. Perhaps that's the bottom-line, the intended message...afterall, Sea Minks are extinct.
In all fairness, I did laugh spontaneously on a handful of occasions, and saw the humor in the rest. The audience was racially split, perhaps 55% Black to 45% white. Women outnumbered men 4 to 1. My seat, row G, seat 107 was smack dab in the middle of the middle, so I had a pretty good perspective on everyone around me. There was a subset of Black woman of a certain age...let me be polite (50-70 yo) who ate this shit up! In particular there was one of this set sitting on the right in the front against the stage who's laughter was so loud, that other members of that demographic sitting near to me, quietly commented on it. Given the nature of the show, I found this intra-audience interaction as interesting as the play--a sort of 360 degree experience.
As stated, the six actors were committed to work and enjoyable to watch. In particular, Sabrina Lynn Sawyer who played Kiera and was the last Sea Mink-ette standing was outstanding. She has tremendous instincts as an actor and therefore uses every gift in her arsenal to create a fully rounded, compelling character. It would be easy to fall into stereotypes when presenting a clutch of essentially "mean" girls, and she avoided that trap with excellence.
The set was simple, the sound adequate, the lighting half baked--but perhaps it was the best they could do. In particular the scenes from the underworld were underlit to the point of annoyance. You could see that there was an idea of how to do presence, but an inability to recognize that the doing was not well realized.
Overall, it was okay.
Practicing their moves: Kiera, Gabby and Shantee.
Kiera during one of her imaginary encounters with Beyonce.
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