Third time is the charm for Director Alfred Pressier and his association with the City Parks Foundation, last years “Power Of The Trinity” musical about Hallie Selassie’s speech to the League Of Nations felt incomplete and earlier this year, his production of “King Kong” with Non-traditional theater impressario/Playwright Randy Weiner had a lot going for it, including an excellent book, but was stymied by a sense of being incomplete.
Monday’s production of Mando Alvarado’s “Diablo Love” is better than both. A blues based retelling of the “Faust”, not to mention Robert Johnson, story, wherein a man sells his soul to the devil for fame. This time he makes a deal to save his soul by giving up an innocent soul. In this case a young girl Ema (Lizzy Brooks) is the pawn in a chess game between Smoke (Charlie Hudson III) and the devil Meph (Diomargy Numez), Smoke offers her to Meph in return to for his own soul and then falls in love with Ema. Ema’s mother left Ema with her Aunt and her abusive step-Uncle. When her Aunt dies suddenly, the young Smoke sees his opportunity.
Wrapped around this story is Smoke as an older man (Tomas Doncker), who tells the “memory” story from a future and like one man Greek chorus comments on the proceedings, often in song. Doncker and his band perform both originals and Howling Wolf covers, the songs are both stand alones and exposition and include blues, R&B , Gospel, funk, soul. They are uniformly excellent, though some of them are just movement, and some of it is a little generic, nothing is called in.
Doncker is the overwhelming presence he always is and in a nightclub scene with the woman portraying Ema’s mom (Asa “Love Child” Arnold) , they manage to get where Preisser has always wanted to be. A sexy, saucy, sizzling “Wang Dang Doodle”. is followed by the version of “Spoonful” you’ve been waiting for all your life. Everything seems to come together. God and the Devil, in one great smackdown of soulfulness.
It takes a little while for the show to recuperate and indeed, the following scenes of Ema and the young Smoke trying to break the big time with a girl group (“Mama Told Me”, any one?) are the weakest link. “Back On The Road” rights the ship and a full bloodied “In Love For The First Time” leads to a tragic denouement and “Blind Melon Morpheus (missed the train)” -so central to Doncker and bands Howling Wolf Tribute EP and given a towering performance to conclude the show.
It ends bad but not entirely as we are left with the thought that the Devil wins some but notall of them: “Satan We’re Gonna Tear Your Kingdom Down” Aureria Williams wails and you would be hard pressed to deny it.
In some ways, “Diablo Love” is a companion piece to “King Kong, but whereas “King Kong” is satire, “Diablo Love” is a parody, of a form at least. It has the outlines of a movie like “Sparkle” with the added plus of the supernatural. The book is very fine, the entire concept, the older Smoke telling the story of the younger Smoke, works. The acting and singing is excellent. The Doncker Band are a really good one, especially the harp player David Barnes, and the songwriting is constantly pulling you into the story. The dialogue is bland but it doesn’t really effect the story and the story is excellent.
The actual construction of the story is a little off, Ema’s transitions are too sudden, it needs more time, it feels like their are entire scenes missing. But with a running time of 75 minutes and many, many songs and plot to get through, there simply isn’t the time. The staging is minimal in the extreme and compared with, say, “Power Of Trinity” there isn’t much dancing. But “Diablo Love” is powerful stuff and overwhelms and negates its shortcomings. with song and story.
Diablo Love – B+