by AMY BARRATT

Playwright Vadney S. Haynes is an idea-man. That is both the strength and the weakness of his play Blacks Don’t Bowl, which Black Theatre Workshop is currently presenting at the MAI.

The central message of the play is about how we limit ourselves as individuals, and especially as members of cultural and ethnic groups. White men can’t jump, and blacks don’t bowl, right? How many times a day do you hear someone say “that’s just not me”? At one point, a character asks the seemingly absurd question, “What would you look like if you weren’t black?” What he really means is, are there things you’d like to do that you aren’t doing because they don’t fit your “image”? It’s a good question for all of us.

In the play, Frank (Matthew Kabwe) is the executive director of the fictitious Montreal Black Association. Frank goes ballistic when two black artists (Quincy Armorer and Tamara Brown) put on an exhibition that he thinks reinforces stereotypes. Frank wants the Conseil des Arts, which sponsored the show, to shut it down. Playing a character who veers off in a lot of directions in the course of the play, Kabwe never allows Frank to become ridiculous. His performance anchors the production.

Omari Newton plays Pinto, who is working for Frank as a summer intern, but who also performs a pretty decent stand-up comedy act. Pinto’s monologues allow the playwright to interrupt the flow of action and address the audience directly. I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is when the actors are supposedly having conversations but still sound like they’re making speeches. This is especially prevalent in the first half as the playwright introduces us to his contrasting “types.”

Director Nigel Shawn Williams works hard to insert action into a didactic text, with scant success. Debating the whole time, two characters get ready to shoot hoops—they do a little blocking, a little dribbling, but the scene ends without a single shot being taken on the basket that has been dutifully placed on the set (beautiful blow-ups of Montreal row-housing by Ana Cappelluto). The whole basketball thing ends up feeling stagey as hell.

I would feel more optimistic about Blacks Don’t Bowl if I didn’t know that it had already been extensively workshopped and dramaturged over the last five years. Hopefully Haynes will learn a lot from seeing this full production and come back with a re-write in which events happen more organically and characters speak more like people speaking.

CanCon king cometh

Louis Negin’s career as an actor encompasses classic CBC TV shows like Seeing Things and The Littlest Hobo, all the way back to King of Kensington, as well as the films of Guy Maddin and the Stratford stage. Now, the actor who has portrayed gay icons Truman Capote (in Tru) and Noel Coward on stage, is bringing his one-man musical show Polo’s Fantasy to Montreal. Playwrights Workshop Montreal presents a staged reading, featuring Negin and Nick Carpenter on piano, on Sunday, April 2, at the MainLine Theatre (3997 St-Laurent). Like MainLine’s own Johnny Canuck and the Last Burlesque, Negin’s show is fascinated with a bygone Montreal, in this case the “gangster-ridden nightclub world” of the 1950s. The reading is at 8 p.m.. Donations gratefully accepted.

Also at MainLine, Patrick Goddard launches episode two of his fantasy novel, The Secret Roses, Monday, April 3, at 8 p.m., with special guest Catherine Kidd. Admission is $5.

Blacks Don’t Bowl, to April 9 at the Mai (3680 Jeanne-Mance), reservations 932-1104, ext. 225.

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