‘Nativity’ struggles in rebirth

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Mary (Kathleen Purcell Turner) and Joseph (Pierre Clark) dance but don't speak in Congo Square Theatre's production of "The Nativity."

Updated: December 8, 2010 3:08PM

Congo Square Theatre Company’s production of “The Nativity” has become a staple of the Chicago theater scene’s holiday season during the past decade — with “A Christmas Carol” produced on one stage of the Goodman Theatre, while this gospel-infused version of the essential New Testament story — a story that has been around for more than two millennia — is produced on the other.

Originally titled “Black Nativity” (a more fitting title, to be sure), the work was devised in 1961 by Langston Hughes, the great Harlem Renaissance poet, and reinvented by composer-adapter-arranger McKinley Johnson of Chicago. In the tradition of “Hot Mikado,” the swing version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, the show puts a hip edge — musically, verbally and movementwise — on familiar material, and in the process links the pivotal Bible story set in the Holy Land with the spiritual landscape of the contemporary African-American church.

The current edition of “Nativity,” directed by Aaron Todd Douglas — with musical direction by Jaret Landon and choreography by Kevin Iega Jeff —is appealing if at times uneven, with some flubbed lines and off-key singing, and a sometimes sluggish overall pace.

But John Stewart Crowley gets thing off to a wise and mellow start as Gabriel. The two dancers who play Mary and Joseph — and who never speak a word, but move in a vocabulary that will be familiar to fans of the Alvin Ailey company — could not be more beautiful, with Kathleen Purcell Turner (a member of Chicago’s Deeply Rooted Dance Theater) as the young virgin and Pierre Clark (a senior at Indiana’s Emerson School for the Visual and Performing Arts) as her adoring, protective Joseph.

Adding great zest (and big voices) are Melody Betts (as Mary’s mother) and Dawn Bless (as Aunt Elisabeth). Alexis J. Rogers is a knockout as the sassy yet awestruck Athaliah, with Jeniel Smith her fine counterpart as Johasobah. And Dwelvan David has great fun as the evil King Herod.

Completing the cast are Kalind Haynes, Dawn Bless, Laura Walls, John Pierce, Kelvin Rosten Jr. and Roshawn Thompson.

There is always plenty of room for updated quips about those eternal plagues, the tax collectors and politicians (“The rich are mad because we got health care,” was one of this season’s fresh lines). And the hotel owners in Bethlehem who try to keep Mary and Joseph out of their upscale establishment ask for their credit score, and proclaim they don’t want “any birthin’ of babies” in their fine rooms.

For the finale, the ensemble, dressed in Gap-like winter whites, dances up the theater’s aisles singing (and rocking) to “The First Noel” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain.”