Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum concludes one of its best seasons ever with an absolutely terrific staging of Alice Childress’s slice-of-1960s-African-American-life Wine In The Wilderness.

Childress’s 1969 one-act takes us back in time to Harlem on a “hot town, summer in the city” night during which most of its residents have opted to remain indoors as rioters run wild in the streets.

 Among those seeking refuge from the outside chaos is 30something artist Bill Jameson (Max Lawrence), who’s about to find his own peace and relative quiet disturbed by the arrival of the aptly nicknamed Oldtimer (Alex Morris) at his door, his arms filled with treasures he claims to have retrieved from the street when they got dropped by fleeing looters.

It doesn’t take long for Oldtimer to inquire about the oil paintings he sees displayed on three side-by-side easels, or for Bill to explain that they make up a triptych, the first representing “Black Girlhood,” the second depicting “Mother Africa,” and the third, as yet unfinished, set to represent “what society has made of our women,” i.e., “as close to the bottom as you can get without crackin’ up.”

And fate would have it that Bill’s 20something married friends Sonny (Kameron J. Brown) and Cynthia (Sydney A. Mason) have found precisely the model he’s been looking for.

Enter Tommy (Leshay Tomlinson Boyce), née Tomorrow Marie, a 30-year-old dress factory worker who’s about as down on her luck as a woman can be, especially on a night that has seen her home nearly burn to the ground along with whatever possessions she had inside, leaving her a fashion disaster in dire need of a makeover, or at the very least a new lease on life.

What ensues over the next hour or so will change the way Bill and Tommy see themselves both as individuals and as members of a community gradually emerging from the shackles of slavery and the injustices of Jim Crow America in the most tumultuous of 20th-century American decades.

Childress’s Wine In The Wilderness may now have reached retirement age since its 1969 debut, but it remains a still relevant portrait of 1960s Black America, a decade during which the hopes ignited by Martin Luther King’s dream found themselves increasing dimmed, though not entirely extinguished, not as long as there were folks like Bill and Tommy and Sonny and Cynthia and even Oldtimer to keep them alive, and the coda with which Childress ends her play will take your breath away.

Director Gerald C. Rivers elicits one superb performance after another beginning with Boyce (hilarious, heartbreaking, and absolutely fabulous as Tommy) and Theatricum Botanicum mainstay Lawrence (dynamically three-dimensional as a man who finds his own preconceptions challenged and changed in a single summer night).

The as-always splendid Mason adds Cynthia to her growing resume of L.A. theater star turns, Brown’s engaging performance as Sonny portends big things ahead for the recent USC grad, and I’ve never loved the legendary Morris more than in his utterly winning performance as the truly one-of-a-kind Oldtimer.

Last but not least, Tanda Kerin and Danielle McPhaul open the evening with several powerful monologs that set the tone for what is about to transpire after which they bring to onstage life a couple of characters that are merely offstage voices in Childress’s script.

 Theatricum Botanicum has done a terrific job of converting its expansive outdoor playing area into Bill’s art-canvas-adorned Harlem apartment.

Beth Eslick deserves major snaps for costumes that evoke Afro-American styles of the 1960s and so do Shoshanna Green for her just-right props, Lucas Fehring for his ‘60s-infused sound design (and for getting Bill’s phone’s ringtone right),  Geoff Barton for lighting that bathes the stage with a nostalgic glow, and Zachary Bones for his original artwork.

Lena Ford is assistant director and dramaturg. Maci Alexis is intimacy and cultural coordinator. Marcus Andrews, Leilani Barrett, Brown, Kerin, and McPhaul are understudies.

Lacey Szerlip is stage manager and Alex Penner is assistant stage manager. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

Having introduced their audiences to Alice Childress in their pitch-perfect revival of her Broadway backstage comedy Trouble In Mind eight summers ago, Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum has made the savvy decision to bring the largely unsung playwright back with her more intimate and compact but no less entertaining and elucidating Wine In The Wilderness.

Bring some wine along to accompany your preshow picnicking on the Theatricum grounds and you’re guaranteed to have an extra fine time under starry Topanga skies.

Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga.
www.theatricum.com

–Steven Stanley
September 7, 2025
Photos: Ian Flanders
Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

Tags: Alice Childress, Los Angeles Theater Review, Theatricum Botanicum