HooDoo Love

This is not an easy show to watch. Sex, rape and death are each acted out onstage, and each of them are graphic. It’s not a happy story, either. It’s a story about a sexually abused woman who goes to utterly desperate measures to get what she wants and keep it that way. After watching HooDoo Love, currently playing at the Cherry Lane Theater, one will most likely feel exhausted.Exhaustion aside, the story is driven by compelling characters, acted skillfully by a talented cast and has an ending that, while not necessarily happy, is motivating. The story is about TouLou (Angela Lewis) an aspiring singer in love with the performer Ace of Spades (Kevin Mambo). Struggling to retain his affection, she asks Candy Lady (Marjorie Johnson) to help her concoct a spell to keep her lover with her. Her efforts are thwarted somewhat by her brother Jib (Keith Davis), an aspiring preacher with some very dark, disturbing secrets.Lewis’ performance as TouLou gives her girlish charm and ambition and makes her a sympathetic, yet flawed heroine. Davis’ Jib is a foreboding villain, but at times his performance falls flat. Johnson makes Candy Lady amusing and somewhat mysterious, but her character seems to fulfill more stereotypes in the plot than forward it at all. Mambo’s Ace is a curious fusion of slick show biz performer and uncertain, unsure man, who makes a sharp and sudden transformation from ardent lover to abusive husband.The script delivers a curious mixture of lessons in HooDoo, shocking depictions of the repression of African-American women, and cultural stereotypes, buoyed by the efforts of the cast to create full people from somewhat underdeveloped characters. While the show itself is not the most accomplished, it foreshadows even better work – for both the writer and the actors.