THEATER REVIEW: ‘Chicken and Biscuits’ offers some hearty comic calories at Fresno State
By Donald Munro
The Fresno State production of “Chicken and Biscuits” sold out Friday night, and for some good reasons: It’s funny. It has a sweet message about family. It includes the most (deliberately) godawful rendition of a hymn you’ve ever heard.
And it has nothing to do with national politics.
Escape away!
Here’s a quick rundown on the show, which has one more performance (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9):
The plot: Playwright Douglas Lyons didn’t get many points for originality when the play opened on Broadway in 2021, but he certainly used a popular storytelling technique: Throw a funeral and then look for the fireworks when family members reunite, some of them for the first time in a long while. Director Thomas-Whit Ellis gives a jaunty feel to the proceedings as he explores the Black Church ritual of putting a paterfamilias to rest. The result is lots of singing (the live choir members and keyboard are a nice touch in the Fresno production), lots of family drama (bickering siblings, reunited cousins, the revelation of juicy family secrets), and lots of food. There’s a fish-out-of-water angle, too, with a “really white and weird” potential son-in-law addition to the extended clan.
Highlights: Mitchell Bowers-Shaw is key as Reginald, the heir to the pulpit at St. Luke’s Church, where the Rev. Bernard Jenkins has long presided. Bowers-Shaw’s extended call-and-response eulogy gives this show the robust, rousing feel of a real service. (At one point he imitates the porters who will take your luggage through the Pearly Gates, giving them a stride reminiscent of a high-stepping marching band.) LeVetta Wheeler-Hall soars as Beverly, the “bad” daughter, whose wisecracks, inappropriate flirtations and general overall delight in disturbing the status quo drives much of the humor. Danay Ferguson, playing Beverly’s daughter, makes up the third of my three favorite performances. Her La’Trice is a schemer and something of a grifter, but she’s also the smartest one in the family and most attuned to the vagaries of human nature.
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Quibbles: I wish that Ellis could have made the audience feel more like part of the congregation. (I would have even consented to stand and sing a hymn.) When I saw the show on Broadway, that feeling gave it an extra boost. And while Lydia Harmon’s costume design hits the mark in many cases, Beverly’s dress – which is talked about so much in the play that it becomes a character in itself – doesn’t deliver in terms of garishness or shock value.
The takeaway: I don’t think this is a script for the ages, but the production is well directed and performed. And it has a lot of family heart.
About that hymn: Special shout-out to Sharon Anderson as Mother Jones, whose brief atonal solo brings the house down. Sometimes in comedy, knowing when to be bad makes it so, so good.
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