Dave Harris’s Tambo & Bones, a Center Theatre Group World Premiere, takes black anger against white America to such extremes that sitting through ninety minutes of it had me wishing I were anyone other than inside the Kirk Douglas Theatre. And it didn’t help that at least forty-five of its ninety minutes are devoted to ear-splitting, N-word/expletive-filled rap.

Harris divides his play into three segments.

The first has comedic duo Tambo (W. Tre Davis) and Bones (Tyler Fauntleroy) performing vaudeville-style routines largely centering on their desire for audience members to put quarters into a hat. (A sequence involving “the playwright” in stuffed mannequin mode was one of the rare instances where I actually found myself laughing out loud.)

Tambo and Bones return in Part Two as a pair of rage-consumed rappers, amped to the max, and if I’d previously been willing to go along with what the duo had up their sleeves, I was soon overpowered by a desire to beat a hasty retreat from the Douglas, which I might well have done had I not been invited to review.

After that, the actors portraying Tambo and Bones appear “as themselves” joined by Tim Kopacz and Alexander Neher as a pair of conspicuously Caucasian robots, a sequence that ends with the extermination of white America, celebrated by Tambo and Bones, or at least that is until the robots revolt.

Finally, and taking themselves quite seriously indeed, Davis and Fauntleroy exit the stage, refusing to return for curtain call bows, and bringing the two robots rather reluctantly along with them.

 I certainly can’t fault Taylor Reynolds’ direction, or Davis and Fauntleroy’s charismatic, dynamic star turns at the Kirk Douglas, or Kopacz and Neher’s droll cameos.

And the production does look absolutely spectacular, in particular Amith Chandrashaker and Mextly Couzin’s blindingly bright, rock concert-ready lighting, but unlike CTG’s Blues For An Alabama Sky and its team of local designers, this co-production with New York’s Playwrights Horizon imports out-of-towners Stephanie Osin Cohen (set), Dominique Fawn Hill (costumes), and Mikhail Fiksel (sound design). Not that their work isn’t outstanding, but it could have been done equally well by Angelinos.

Tambo & Bones features original music by Justin Ellington and fight choreography by J. David Brimmer. Marcedés L. Clanton is production stage manager.

Center Theatre Group describes Tambo & Bones as “imaginative and provocative” and “a daring and explosive rags-to-riches roast of America’s past, present, and future at the intersection of racism and capitalism,” and there’s nothing in that description that would necessarily have warned me to stay away.

I wish I’d had a better idea of what I was in for.

Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City.
www.centertheatregroup.org

–Steven Stanley
May 8, 2022
Photos: Craig Schwartz Photography

Tags: Center Theatre Group, Dave Harris, Kirk Douglas Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review