Melanie McCullough in Those Sensational Soulful Sixties. Photo by Ken Simmons_________
Playwright: Jackie Taylor
At: Black Ensemble Theatre at the Uptown Community Center, 4520 N. Beacon
Phone: 773-769-4451; $40
Runs through: Aug.26
For some folks, the 1970s soundtrack was the Bee Gees. For others, it was John Denver and, for some others, Lou Reed. But in this sequel to Those Sensational Soulful Sixties, the era is defined by Stevie Wonder, Donna Summers and the Spinners. But whether due to problems with copyright clearance, overly narrow thematic focus or the actual zeitgeist of the years representing a cooling-off period after the previous decade's upheaval, Those Sensuous Seductive '70s falls short of its prototype.
The scenario framing the songs presents us with a Saturday night as three generations of family members prepare for Sunday dinner at the home of the clan progenitors—the wives cook, the husbands campaign for some marital canoodling, the elder teenage son departs to party with his peers and his younger siblings scoff at his frivolity. Soul Train on television and an account of a 'Super Seventies' concert introduce elements from outside the domestic sphere.
Though sentiment has always been this brand of cabaret entertainment's stock-in-trade, the proliferation of low-energy ballads puts us in danger of being mellowed into a doze. To be sure, just when we think that all the romantic serenades—The First Time, Inseparable, Loving You—will be caroled by contented matrons to their dutiful spouses, Kenny Davis' geezerly patriarch suddenly rallies with an open-armed interpretation of You And I to rip our hearts out. Melanie McCullough accurately replicates Diana Ross' ingenuous delivery; David Simmons foghorn-voiced Don Cornelius drew nostalgic chuckles from the audience with every syllable; and Davis captures with eerie presentiment the tightly-wound vulnerability of the mid-adolescent Michael Jackson.
But both Byron Willis' stirring rendition of Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On and Simmons' full-out cover of Barry White's My First, My Last, My Everything finish too soon. An eleventh-hour Just Enough For The City belongs in a different show, alongside the O'Jays and Gloria Gaynor. And perhaps the plethora of sim-sex in films and television since the bacchanalic seventies have inured us to spectacle like the choreography for Let's Get It On.
However reassuring it may be to see senior citizens keep the fires going and youngsters focus on goals loftier than immediate hormonal satisfaction, when audiences at the performance I attended expressed more enthusiasm for the curtain-raiser Brick House and afterpiece Your Old Lady, it would seem to evidence a greater desire in 2007 for community revels than for pillow talk.