(Those things and more seem to have been packed onstage into a single giant purse, unclaimed and unattended, that Peaches calls Miss Bag.)Īin’t No Mo’ returns to Peaches twice more. “You would have no memory of the soul you were, the dance you’ve been dancing, or the song you’ve been singing,” Peaches points out. Participation is voluntary, but any Black people who stay behind will be transformed into-horror of horrors-privileged white males. Peter of a heavenly airport gate, helping weary souls fly away to a land where joy may live. (The flight number is 1619.) Peaches is the St. So in Ain’t No Mo’ ’s second scene, set in a near future, we meet Peaches-played with uncompromising oomph by Cooper himself, in a smart red outfit and long pink hair-in her professional capacity: as the overburdened airport employee in charge of corralling passengers onto a giant plane to Africa, as the final stage of a mass Black exodus organized by the government. Ain’t No Mo’ | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus But the good pastor, of course, is preaching too soon: The presence of a Black man in the White House, it turns out, does not trump four centuries of racial strife. He authorizes loud reactions from his Black spectators in particular Pastor Freeman’s speech, delivered with fire and music by Marchánt Davis, includes a sequence of call-and-response that no non-Black congregants would (or should) dare to join. “And for those of you who are quiet, obedient and unresponsive in your church, consider this yo black church, yo sanctuary, yo juke joint, yo kitchen table, yo trial shaker, yo money maker, yo elevator, yo resuscitator.” Amens follow from the crowd amid the stained glass of the Belasco Theatre, and they continue into the play’s audaciously hopeful first scene: a satirical sermon by one Pastor Freeman at the 2008 funeral of “Brother Righttocomplain,” a pillar of the African-American community, whose death has been occasioned by the presumed end of racism signified by the election of Barack Obama.Ĭooper seems intent on not only amplifying but multiplying minority voices. “This is your church,” he tells the audience in the pre-show announcement of his uproarious and furious comedy Ain’t No Mo’, in the warmly bossy voice of a drag queen named Peaches. Cooper has come to Broadway to make a little noise.
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