'Black Enough': Tales That Get Under the Skin

With the presidential campaign floodlighting the issue of race, the time is prime for Clinton Johnston's "Am I Black Enough Yet?," a patchwork of poignant and satirical skits grappling with questions of ethnicity.

Director George Grant's staging for the Charter Theatre occasionally drags, and the script's laid-back aura gives the production something of a throwaway feel. But Johnston's bold tonal shifts add surprise and texture to the piece, which is always thoughtful and sometimes enjoyably sly.

"Am I Black Enough Yet?" kicks off with a tongue-in-cheek edict: "For the duration of this performance, we're gonna make everybody here black," announces actress Paige Hernandez, standing with the four other members of the multiracial cast in front of a low pink wall. And audience members who are already African American learn that they are, until curtain call, "like, uber-black . . . 'Shaft'-level black!"

Clad in black pants and colored long-sleeved shirts, the performers reel off "Eight Things You Should Know or Do When You're Fully Black" ("I don't care how annoying Spike Lee is. I don't care how preachy John Singleton gets. . . . You have to see their movies!"). The sequence sets a comic tone, but several scenes and monologues that follow during the nearly two-hour work are pensive or wistful.

In one rather overlong playlet, for instance, a Paris-based jazz musician (David Lamont Wilson), bitter about America's record of racism and homophobia, declines to accept an award from the NAACP. In another, an idealist (Edward Daniels) recalls learning that Ezra Jack Keats -- a children's author and illustrator celebrated for books about a small black boy -- was white, the son of Polish immigrants. And another sequence is a long poem about two women on a bus, narrated by Wilson, with Hernandez and Brittney K. Sweeney quietly portraying the commuters.

Then there are sections that might have been airlifted directly from "Saturday Night Live." Perhaps the best of these is "International Slang Council," a hilarious sequence about swaggering hip-hop glitterati -- complete with gold chains and other bling -- who meet regularly to formally vote recent slang terms into the language.

The actors channeling these witticisms and ruminations are enthusiastic and energetic, particularly acing the Slang Council's "That's phat!" postures and mannerisms. Daniels lends graceful intensity to the Keats monologue, and Hernandez is pleasingly brassy in the rally-the-audience speeches. Adding an extra dollop of soulfulness and vigor to the show are changing slide projections on a screen at the back of the stage: a colorful print of a cabaret, for the jazz musician scene, for example, or samples of Keats's illustrations.

As you might expect from a show that dares to overhaul ticket-holder demographics, "Am I Black Enough Yet?" requires a modicum of audience participation: At one point, the actors order everyone to stand up and dance. That's the bad news. The good news is that you're allowed to sit down after about 10 seconds.

Am I Black Enough Yet? by Clinton Johnston. Directed by George Grant. With Matthew Eisenberg. About 1 hour 50 minutes. Through May 3 at Theatre on the Run, 3700 S. Four Mile Run Dr., Arlington. Call 202-333-7009 or visit http://www.chartertheatre.org.