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Newspaper Articles 
Theater review: 'Beggars' Strike' a rich, cheery farce 
Star Tribune
Published: January 20, 2002
By Rohan Preston
"The Beggars' Strike," which premiered on Friday at the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis, is that rarest of theater shows: a sweet, cheery farce whose sharp writing and sublime humor don't leave a venomous aftertaste.
The lack of cynicism, so appropriate post-Sept. 11, is one winning feature of this music-infused play, which giddily takes us into a world where things, at least as we understand them, are turned on their heads. "Strike," which boasts tapestries of West African-sounding music by Kysia Bostic, continues the new physical, spiritual and mental explorations at the Children's Theatre Company.
Set in an Islamic society in West Africa, the play tracks a struggle between a government minister who wants to win favor with his president and attract currency-toting tourists, and the beggars he is charged with removing from the city.
The problems he faces are manifold. The president and the tourists are fickle in their desires; for political reasons, the president decides that he wants the beggars in town on Election Day, while the tourists complain that without beggars, they are deprived of "local color." Meanwhile, the beggars, who have decency and moral rectitude, are essential to the religious creed of the society in "Strike." They pass on the people's prayers to God.
The pretzel-twirling plot, deftly adapted by Carlyle Brown from the novel of the same name by Aminata Sow Fall, provides moments of gut-thumping laughter, excellently executed by the actors. For example, government minister Mour Ndiaye (Shawn Hamilton) saunters home one day to the strangest of scenes on his veranda: his wife is washing the feet of a beggar she regards as a holy man. The swooning beggar is fanned by his chief of police, the man charged with getting beggars off the street.
Director Tazewell Thompson has taken the same irreverent approach to "Strike" as he did in "Black No More," Syl Jones' wandering musical that played at the Guthrie Lab some years ago. But Thompson does not traffic too much in archetypes, resulting in a much more focused production, even as it goes over the top in places.
He could barely go wrong, though, since he is blessed with Brown's witty, edge-of-your-seat script and a tremendous 19-member cast led by Hamilton.
Hamilton imbues the minister with the sell-out-your-family ambition, but he does it in the most nonstereotypical, even loving way. He brings a great sense of timing and Chaplinesque physicality to his character in the show's most fluid, most virtuoso performance. If his transformation from driven minister to understanding minister is not as convincing -- the main quibble with the show -- it might be due more to the staging than the performance.
Kudos also goes to Gavin Lawrence, who again displays dhis broad acting skills in the role of the blind, keen-nosed beggar; Monica Scott, who plays the quizzical, happy-dancing minister's wife, Lolli; Joetta Patrice Wright, the young talent who plays the minister's daughter, and musician Eliezer Freitas Santos, who controls the heartbeat with his drumming.
The colorful choreography of Julie Arenal, who did "Hair" on Broadway, is almost always appropriate, except with one character. Whenever Lolli gets excited, she breaks out into African dance steps that are uncalled for.
The beggars in "Strike" are handsome, clean and beautifully attired in African fabrics by costume designer Merily Murray-Walsh. They sing Bostic's lovely songs, which wrap us in multipart harmonies as colorful as their clothes.
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Copyright 2002 Star Tribune. Republished here with the permission of the Star Tribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the Star Tribune.
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