The Message Is in the Music

PLAYING GOD Rick Stone sings divinely.

Photo: Daniel Nicholas

Black Ensemble’s theatrical mix-tapes rarely require much pretext beyond a good excuse to belt a little Curtis Mayfield. That’s the case with its latest, a bighearted tale of good versus evil. Make that Good versus Evil: The play pits no less than God against Lucifer in a soul-music-powered battle for souls.

Rock & roll is always a little better with the devil in it, and here Lucifer’s lost souls get to have some fun before they’re saved. Demon Dwight (Michael T. Bartlett Jr.) brings the house down with Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say,” and demons Doubt (Carrie) and Fear (Kylah Frye) inject a little hip-swinging hellfire; Carrie’s rendition of “Love’s in Need of Love Today” is a particular standout. On God’s side, angel Faith (Rhonda Preston) makes a damn good case for getting religion with “Ain’t No Way.” Still, the song choices don’t always work: “Let It Be” is leaden not for its delivery but for the sheer weight of meaning it’s forced to shoulder, and “Devil in Disguise” invites painfully literal staging, though it suits Bartlett’s heart-tugging tenor.

The alluded-to battle between Heaven and Hell never besmirches Carl Ulaszek’s heavenly white set, but the audience can thrill to the gentle blasphemy of God’s tender canoodling with His other half, She; as He reminds us, God’s all about the love. Stellar vocalizing and great warmth foster complicity between performers and spectators; nobody complains when, in the second act, the cast throws off the yoke of plot altogether.

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