MiLK
The first act of this lightly updated Nambi E. Kelley street-poetry show, which debuted in 1995, is nothing short of miraculous. Though it traffics in gritty urban-schoolyard tropes and opens with the unwieldy doubling of the protagonist by a guardian angel/true-self figure, the script here never succumbs to empowered-survivor rhetoric or symbolic hysteria, and the principal actors are so exceptional they sell everything they come near.
Written in the lived-experience shadow of the projects, the story follows a group of young, black, female friends as they enter early adulthood, in particular Baby, the vivacious good girl who’s raped by a neighborhood regular. Even as they’re introduced, Mr. Conn and his assault are a little too nightmarish, but the basic vulnerability of the child of public housing rings chillingly true. And the flawless yet genuine performances of the cast are a movement-and-patter tour de force, especially in a joyous (and electrifying) double-dutch jump-rope call-and-response set piece.
The second act unfortunately gets snared in the traps traditionally littering this field. Mr. Conn becomes hopelessly protean, defying all reality checks; the battles between Baby, her would-be beau, and her “Womaclown” other get intractable, interminable and hard to follow; the climax, while satisfying, doesn’t make much sense. Still, the reality of both character and characterization defy the uncertain plotting: Blackmore lives every heart-rending moment as Baby, and Wimbs, Jones and Pryor don’t strike a false note as her “play-friend” pals. Credit director Smith for holding this package together with undeniable yet invisible élan.
