Say Amen, Everybody

By RICHARD CORLISS

Broadway cynics are of two minds about the current theatrical season: a) it hasn't started yet; b) it's already over. Only two new musicals and four new plays--and no certifiable hits--have opened since Labor Day. For the moment, Broadway is dominated by the Brits and the blacks. The Royal Shakespeare Company has extended its repertory run of Cyrano de Bergerac and the enchanting Much Ado About Nothing. But the English are invaders. New native works measure the pulse of the American theater, and just now three new Broadway shows are the creations of blacks. Once again black performers are lighting up the Great White Way.

Take your pick of genres and moods. A cabaret evening? Try Haarlem Nocturne, led by lightning-footed Andre De Shields and best described as The Cotton Club with all the terrific dancing put back in. A serious play? In August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, a quartet of black gents sit around talking about music, women, and the demonstrable unfairness of life. Alas, Ma Rainey natters toward its climax like Ibsen gone funky, but it illuminates the talents of worldly-wise actors; one, Charles S. Dutton, spumes anger as the odd man out, striding, not shuffling, to his doom. A one-woman show? Catch Whoopi Goldberg, six monologues written and performed by a rag-doll actress with a bonkers stage name. Some of the skits are predictably poignant, and two just peter out. But the evening serves as an embossed calling card for stardom, presented by a scarifyingly gifted comic artist whose radiant smile even a cobra would be compelled to return.

Before or after seeing Whoopi, the cobra is advised to trek uptown to 104th Street for the season's joyfullest noise. Mama I Want to Sing is a "story in concert," in which a disc jockey narrator spins out the tale of a young girl who dreams of becoming a pop singer. Her father is a Harlem minister, her mother a traditionalist who believes the only good music is God's music. This becomingly naive plot--a black Jazz Singer or a prequel to Dreamgirls--is sturdy enough to support a dozen or so knockout gospel singers, with a spirit that cradles the audience in its communal warmth. Steve Williams leads the Reach Ensemble with dervish vitality; Terry Myrick and Gaillou emerge from that choir to perform prodigies of soul stirring; and Octavia Lambertis (who alternates in the lead role with Desiree Coleman) leapfrogs octaves as she sings gospel or R & B with angelic possession.

On both sides of the footlights, Mama is very much a family affair. The audience is composed largely of black families in their Sunday best, and onstage Doris Troy presides over the service; this is her story, and she is playing her own mother. The show was written by Vy Higginsen (Troy's sister) and Kenneth Wydro (Higginsen's husband); Higginsen frequently plays the narrator, and her brother Randy plays the minister. After the rousing curtain call, Randy moves to the theater exit and, ever the good shepherd, greets the congregation as it leaves.

Mama has been running to jubilant houses for almost two years, thanks to some irresistible entrepreneurship: records, T shirts and key chains are available in the lobby; church groups have bused in from other East Coast cities; and in the middle of Act II everything stops for a commercial for the show ("Now you can charge it!"). This feel-good musical should keep running too, as long as anyone's soul wants to sing.