The devil is in the details in Tambourines to Glory
The question is simple, one that could generate a yes or no answer.
That is, if the answer were as simple as the question.
Because Erica Harris has to weigh the good and the bad in Laura, the self-proclaimed pastor of the Tambourine Temple who sells tap water as “Holy Water from Jordan” and runs numbers through coded Scripture.
It’s all about money to Laura, who hatches a money scheme with her best friend Essie Belle.
It’s 1950s Harlem, and Essie Belle has been kicked out of her apartment. Neither she nor Laura have any money.
So, why not start a church? People would fill the offering plates in their own searches for hope.
But then something happens. Essie Belle chooses the righteous road of using the church as a tool for God’s work.
And Laura?
She makes a deal with the devil.
It’s something Harris has to consider when contemplating whether she likes Laura. She plays the character in UpStage Thteatre’s production of Langston Hughes’ 1956 play Tambourines to Glory, which runs Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 25-26, in the State Police Academy Auditorium.
Harris smiles. She can’t help it. “I do like Laura,” she said. “She has her faults, and she’s totally blinded by the limelight. And she’s bossy. But I like her.”
It’s true. Laura feels like a star when she stands behind the church pulpit. And it’s true that she uses the money coming into the church to feed her star-like lifestyle.
But she does have some redeeming qualities, which the audience will discover by the play’s end.
“There is redemption in this play,” Ava Brewster-Turner said. “It’s a story about so many things. It comments on what was happening in religion at that time, and what’s still happening today. And it’s a story about friendship.”
Turner is UpStage Theatre’s founder and artistic director, as well as director of this show. She remembers the play from her college days.
“And I wanted to do it here,” she said. “It’s so powerful. Langston Hughes’ language is so powerful, and I love period pieces.”
Again, Hughes’ play was first performed in 1956. He revamped his story, and it was published as a novel in 1958.
Now, revamping doesn’t mean that he changed the story. Laura and Essie Belle still cook up a scheme for opening a faux church to make money.
It’s just that plays and novels are written differently, and Hughes had to fill in details that were absent in the script to make it a book.
“The heart of the story is still the same,” Turner said.
And at the heart lies many questions, the first being is it right to use God’s name as a ruse? Are there consequences?
There are plenty in Hughes’ story. Laura and Essie Belle decide to start their church on a street corner at 26th and Lenox. Then Laura meets and falls for the well-dressed, smooth talker Buddy Lomax.
Now guess who he is.
“He’s the devil,” Turner said. “That’s not giving anything away, because he tells the audience when he steps on the stage. But you already know this the moment you see him.”
And Buddy has resources readily at hand. He helps Laura and Essie Belle acquire an old theater for their church, then he helps them build their business.
For that’s what the Tambourine Temple is at first, a business. But then conflict arises. Essie Belle sends for her 16-year-old daughter, Marietta, who is living in the South. Her daughter has aspirations of going to college, and she hopes to finish school in Harlem.
“But there’s conflict between Buddy and Essie Belle’s daughter, and he uses her as a wedge between Essie Belle and Laura,” Brittany Tanner said.
Tanner plays Marietta, which marks her first theater role. Harris also is making her theater debut as Laura.
“Marietta sees the good in things,” Tanner said. “And she sees her mother as doing good and helping people. And ironically, she wants to go to college to be a nurse.”
The irony? Well, Tanner is studying to be a nurse at Southern University.
“So, the role was perfect for me,” she said.
And Tanner is right. Marietta sees her mother as a minister, because that essentially is what Essie Belle becomes. She questions her original motives and realizes that people really do come to church to seek God.
And as Jesus set the example by meeting their physical needs of hunger by multiplying fishes and loaves at the Sermon on the Mount, Essie Belle begins helping her congregation in their daily lives.
And Laura? She continues running lucky numbers by way of Bible verses. She dresses in expensive furs and drives and expensive car.
She’s on top of the world until she kills Buddy Lomax. It happens in an argument, and though he’s the devil, she’s able to kill his earthly body.
Instead of owning up to her crime, she points the police to Essie Belle.
So, how is it possible to like Laura?
Well, Harris knows the answer to that question. But she also knows that audiences will have to attend a performance of UpStage Theatre’s Tambourines to Glory to find out.
And it’s only at the performances that audiences will be able to hear Jackie Mims as the Tambourine Temple’s featured vocalist.
“I’ve always joked with my family,” Mims said. “I told them that at my funeral, I want everyone to play a tambourine. Now every time there’s a toy store ad with a tambourine, they say, ‘Maybe we should go buy some.’”
That’s the family joke. The reality is Mims will get to play a tambourine during her performances.
Mims is the former president of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board and a noted counselor in the community.
“My schedule is so full, but I wanted to be a part of this production,” she said. “I wish I could have had a more intricate role, but I had a meeting the day of the auditions, and I wasn’t able to make it in time. So, I’m happy to be able to play this part and be a part of the play.”
Mims will be a member of the Tambourine Temple congregation that witnesses Laura’s rise and fall.
And watches as she seeks redemption in the end.
CAST: Erica Harris, Elizabeth Mays, Brittany Tanner, Stanley White, Matthew Self, Chris Moore, Lillian Maggitt, J’Licia Perry, Emanuel Ventress and Zach Gistarb; Jackie Mims, featured vocalist.
ARTISTIC STAFF: Ava Brewster-Turner, director; Marcus Haney, musical director; Clarence Duncan, technical assistant; Kalisha Black, technical assistant; Barbara Oliver, costumes; Camfloug, Inc. and Maddgame Entertainment, publicity.