The best part of Katori Hall’s Broadway debut, “The Mountaintop,” was the very end, when the show really took flight. Most of the time, the 30-year-old playwright seemed constricted by her subject’s scope: the last night of Martin Luther King Jr. By bringing the legend down to earth, she missed out on what made him an icon.
Hall pulls off the juxtaposition of earthy poetry and grit a lot more effectively in “Hurt Village,” which opened last night at the new Signature Center. But she also gets carried away by her own dexterity, and the overlong show loses its focus in the second half.
The title refers to the nickname for a rundown Memphis housing project. How bad is it? “Like you-betta-move-yo-Big Mama-out-these-mutha f – – kin’-projects-’fo-she-get-gang-raped-robbed-and-murdered-by-her-Gangsta-Disciple-crackhead-son bad,” explains 13-year-old Cookie (the magnetic Joaquina Kalukango).
Cookie is surrounded by larger-than-life, motormouthed neighbors and extended family, including hairdresser mom Crank (Marsha Stephanie Blake), a recovering druggie, and great-grandmother Big Mama (Tonya Pinkins, of “Caroline, or Change”), who dreams of getting her kin out of Hurt Village.
The show’s narrator and life force, Cookie wants to be a flight attendant when she grows up. Plan B: rapping. She certainly has what it takes, licking local guys Skillet (Lloyd Watts) and Ebony (Charlie Hudson III) in a charged-up verbal battle.
Hall, director Patricia McGregor and the cast are at their electrifying best in that scene. Drawing from Memphis-style dancing and hip-hop, it explodes with a vibrant energy that makes the numbers in most musicals seem quaint.
The rest of the first act is almost as good, as the playwright juggles characters and narratives like as many balls, keeping them all up in the air with skill.
But after intermission, some of these balls slip out of Hall’s grasp and bounce haphazardly, or disappear entirely. Local kingpin Tony C (Ron Cephas Jones) is woefully underused, and a subplot about Cookie’s father (Corey Hawkins) dealing drugs doesn’t get any traction.
Eventually, what you suspect is going to happen does happen. This could be Hall’s way of underlining fate, as in a Greek tragedy. Or it could simply be clichés catching up with her.
But “Hurt Village” has enough grace notes to make you stand up and pay attention: Big Mama on her knees, literally begging a housing official. Cookie, realizing that her smarts may not be enough. You want all of these people to make it someday, somehow.