Model Citizens in WINE IN THE WILDERNESS — Review

In her New York directorial debut, LaChanze returns to the work of Alice Childress, in whose play Trouble in Mind she fiercely starred on Broadway in 2021, renewing interest in the writer’s under-seen oeuvre. This time, she stages her 1969 play, Wine in the Wilderness, in a smart Classic Stage Company production featuring a sizzling Olivia Washington.

Amid the Harlem riot of 1964, the suave young artist Bill (Grantham Coleman) is looking to complete the third panel of a triptych he’s painting on Black womanhood; the first canvas depicts youthful innocence, the second an idealized African mythos. The third, he heartily rhapsodizes with Oldtimer (Milton Craig Nealy), a friendly wino who breezes into his studio, will be a cautionary tale of the kind of “messed up chick” you’d cross the street to avoid.

This is why Tommy (Washington) is picked up at a bar and brought over by his friends Sonny-man (Brooks Brantly) and Cynthia (Lakisha May). Brash, lively, and not dripping with bohemian chic, they see her as the perfect model of Black womanhood gone wrong. With Oldtimer quietly observing, the three friends take turns slighting her looks, intelligence, and lifestyle while toasting their own advancement.

As in Trouble in Mind, which patiently laid bare the workplace microaggressions faced by a Black actress, Childress is interested in everyday culture wars, here the ones waged within a subculture; what we take from our people and how we sell them out in our quest for advancement. Tommy drinks, doesn’t know the African-American history books strewn about Bill’s apartment (the intimate set is by Arnulfo Maldonado), and definitely does not use the term “African-American,” opting instead for one which deeply, and showily, offends her host. But she’s no social work case, and is definitely no stooge. When, in a woman to woman moment, Cynthia advises she should soften up and become the kind of lady men open doors for, she fires back, “What if I'm standing there and they don't open it?”

There is a compelling conversation between Childress’s writing and LaChanze’s contemporary direction. The script doesn’t insist too hard, but it’s easy to imagine its subtext calling for these characters to be presented in a more caricaturish way which LaChanze is measured in tempering. So while Dede Ayite’s costumes and Nikiya Mathis’ wigs are characteristically rich, Tommy does not immediately read as the stereotype her peers perceive her to be. It’s a humanizing touch, trusting the author’s dialectics and her star’s ability, but one that softens the play’s blunt-force legibility. And yet LaChanze then continues this artists’ dialogue, complicating Childress’ too-clean finale with a poignantly unsettled closing tableau.

Four years after her incandescent performance in Trouble in Mind – which was both the veteran actor’s first time leading a Broadway play, and the 1955 work’s long-delayed Broadway debut – it feels as if LaChanze has clutched onto something beautiful in the elder’s work, and is now passing it forward. Washington, catching the baton, creates a performance that is compelling, evocative and all-encompassing; suggesting a woman determined on being life, whether of the party or of her own path. Out of this well-calibrated, finely acted production, the triumvirate of Washington’s performance, LaChanze’s direction, and Childress’s words, make it a must-see.

‍Wine in the Wilderness is in performance through April 13, 2025 at Classic Stage Company on East 13th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.