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This is the second time this season that I’ve watched an actress struggle into her pantyhose onstage. Both times, the sequence was brilliantly executed and brought down the house, and each version illustrated that actress’s particular strengths. In Modern Muse’s Bad Dates, it was Diana Dresser — blond and lithe — hopping around the stage and finally lying on her back to pull the clinging, recalcitrant material over her hips. Ghandia Johnson, who plays Stacey in Soul Survivor, is taller, heavier and a less subtle actress than Dresser, but she’s also possessed of a truly wondrous vitality. So what if there’s a little jiggle to her belly or some cellulite showing on her magnificent thighs? You are so lucky — so privileged — to be seeing these things at all, because the woman is a goddess, the essence of female sass and sexuality all packed into one glorious, wriggling body.
The second triumph in this three-person show is Vincent C. Robinson’s portrayal of the Devil. My god (pun intended), this man is having a great time. He swaggers, teases and seduces the audience, utters tee-hees of laughter that are simultaneously sinister and self-mocking, mugs, grimaces and at one point breaks into an outrageous triumphal dance, all while the audience cheers his every move.
Robinson’s Devil is attempting to win the soul of Guy Coston, a quiet, rational man who’s perfectly content with his life and his profession as a mailman. He’s not interested in money, fame, meaningless sex or infinite power. The one thing he wants — true love — is something the Devil can’t get for him. But this only makes him more interesting as prey, and Satan’s not about to give up. Guy has to serve as straight man for the two other characters, which makes his the hardest role, but Cristofer L. Davenport gives the man a quiet dignity that works well.
Author/director Ted Lange’s premise is bewitching, and there are many strengths to his charming and good-natured script. The play also contains some genuine wisdom, as when Guy attempts to convince would-be novelist Stacey that there’s more honor in the gritty day-by-day work of honing her craft as a writer than in unearned fame and glory. Guy’s desire to live a meaningful life and acquire a stable relationship, the fact that he values his job because it helps society function smoothly and ensures that poor women will get their much-needed welfare checks is admirable, too. And I like his moving eulogy for the ideals of the 1960s civil rights movement, in which he laments the “hip white boys” who once partnered with their black counterparts but eventually sold their souls and became their fathers. There’s also an interesting speech in which the Devil claims that organized religion is his invention and serves as a force for ill in the world, when it’s through good works that people reach heaven. “You can be an atheist and still get in,” he says.
On the downside, this play was obviously written some time ago, because a lot of the references are dated. (Which is ironic, since Johnson was a Survivor cast member, and playwright Lange survived that iconic ’70s show, The Love Boat.) Asked for examples of celebrities whose souls he’s won, the Devil cites Richard Burton, who acquired fame, money and Liz, “the most beautiful woman in the world.” But then again, it’s a hoot to hear Burton singing a number from Camelot within a sound design that includes at least a dozen songs about the devil. This very unhip musical moment also supports one of the play’s more interesting themes: the differences between black and white culture. Stacey spends a fair amount of time gently mocking Guy for his white-sounding name, and his proclivity for fishing and classical music.
Some of the dialogue is unconvincing. Why would Guy so quickly believe that the man who appears in his room at the play’s beginning is the Devil, and almost instantly fall to bargaining? And a couple of metaphors don’t work: Stacey’s description of her ex-boyfriend’s resentment as a bird that eventually becomes a cat and a goat and an elephant, for instance, or Guy’s long comparison, complete with a lot of punning on the word “rod,” of sex to trout fishing. Otherwise, I enjoyed most of the play’s ribald sex jokes, both verbal and physical, and I loved the list of nicknames Stacey reeled off in answer to Guy’s question about whether she had ever acquired any. A final flaw: We know Stacey and Guy have to find some way of outwitting the Devil, and we’re rooting for them to do it, but the plot twist Lange gives us simply isn’t strong, surprising or ingenious enough.
Still, I had a very good time at Soul Survivor, and so — from their hoots of laughter — did everyone else in the place. The show won’t require that you to think too hard, but it makes for an interesting, life-affirming evening of theater.
