THE POSITIVE EVOLUTION OF BONGO BAKER
ETA Creative Arts Foundation
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The Positive Evolution of Bongo Baker is about peer pressure, a perfectly valid topic for a show aimed at young people. At first playwright Runako Jahi handles this issue by showing it in action. Bongo, a struggling student at an inner-city school, wants to study hard and get good grades, but he knows his classmates will make fun of him if he does. When his teacher, Mr. Lemon, asks Bongo who the black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar is, another student sneers, “Maaan, you answer that question, they gon’ think you a girl.”
The production of Bongo Baker at the ETA Creative Arts Foundation is sincere and full of energy. Cast members sing to the accompaniment of a trio led by Wanda Bishop, who wrote the music for the show. Donn Carl Harper transforms himself into a nervous nerd as Bongo. Mark Townsend garners plenty of laughs with his portrayal of the nerdy Mr. Lemon. And Bernadette Clarke seems to leap all over the stage and ricochet off the walls as Bongo’s hyperactive girlfriend, T-Baby.
Some of the material is charming and clever. Before the “Pocket Song” the four performers go through the audience asking children what they have in their pockets. And during “Reynold’s Rap” Brown wears a baseball cap with a box of Reynolds aluminum foil pasted to the brim.
