It's not like there aren't kernels of cleverness within playwright Oliver Mayer's mostly insubstantial and surreal historical drama. But they're never nursed into anything consequential, so the play merely sputters into a scattershot and half-cracked pastiche of borderline incomprehensible metaphors and lame conceits. Mayer, best known for the boxing drama Blade to the Heat, sets this meditation on racial and musical themes in what he calls the "Deep South of the Mind." This is a reference that seems meant to mitigate the playwright's presentation of an almost numbing procession of mildly offensive racial and dramatic stereotypes, which are deemed to be "archetypes"—and pretentiously allegorical ones, at that.
Black and blind blues singer Blind Gary (L. Kenneth Richardson) stumbles into Charleston circa 1898 and bumps into carpetbagging but genial Jewish paperboy Abe (Tony Abatemarco), who has moved to the South to seek his fortunes first-generation-American-style. After Blind Gary purchases a little boy (Tina Sanchez) from prostitute Freda (Chan't Johnson), Gary and the child rake in the quarters by creating a gospel harmony act. Complications ensue after Blind Ross (Jeris Lee Poindexter), another black blind blues singer, arrives in town and battles Blind Gary for control of the little boy. Meanwhile, Abe and Freda fall in love, and the little boy is seduced away from his dueling blues-singing masters by the Yellow Kid (Steven Klein) and The Sanctimonious Kid (Jennifer Morrison), a pair of cartoon characters from the 19th century funny papers who somehow come alive to torment everyone.
It should be engrossing—and somewhat amusing—to see two blind blues singers duking it out in a battle of gospel music. However, notwithstanding some soul-bustingly tuneful interludes during which Richardson and Poindexter warble spirituals that clearly have their roots in the Southern slave tradition, it is hard to peg precisely what Mayer's play is about. The show is an intermittently environmental but slapdash collection of poorly connected incidents featuring characters who are unconvincing and uninvolving.
That said, director Matt Shakman's production is first-rate, boasting crisp blocking and pacing, and featuring some vivid and dynamic acting, which is wasted on such feathery material. Richardson is powerful as he alternates folksiness and a coiled sense of danger. And Johnson's sassy prostitute, while written as a standard golden-hearted whore-type, demonstrates a sad innocence that's appealing. Abatemarco offers a tight and passionate turn in the thankless role of a wisecracking newspaper salesman.
"Ragged Time," presented by and at the Black Dahlia Theatre, 5453 W. Pico Blvd., L.A. Thurs.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 7 p.m. Sept. 27-Nov. 3. $18. (323) 856-4200.