Keyonna, the black, gay, teenage heroine of C.A. Johnson’s All the Natalie Portmans, would seem to have a lot stacked against her. In addition to belonging to two historically oppressed minority groups, she lives in constant threat of homelessness, with an alcoholic mother—her father died not long ago, we learn, of a heart attack—who can disappear for days at a time, leaving Keyonna and her older brother, who struggles to protect and provide for his sister, to fend for themselves.
On the plus side, our protagonist is smart as a whip, breezing through AP classes even as she pays them little mind, and has a vivid imagination, which she applies to movies and the celebrities who appear in them. The centerpiece of Donyale Werle’s set in this MCC Theater production is a clipboard festooned with photos Keyonna has cut out of magazines—Natalie Portmans is set in 2009, before such worship went primarily digital—featuring favorites ranging from Whoopi Goldberg to Winona Ryder. But Keyonna’s primary idol is the play’s titular star, who is represented throughout, popping in dressed as various characters Portman has played, from her tortured ballerina in Black Swan (technically a 2010 release, but no biggie) to Star Wars‘s Padmé to roles in less widely remembered films such as Where the Heart Is and Anywhere But Here.
But while her costumes, cleverly designed by Jennifer Moeller, are meant to represent Portman in these different parts, Johnson portrays her as the actress herself—that is, as Keyonna, an aspiring screenwriter, would envision her. The relationship between this Natalie—an always game, sometimes goofy, ultimately empathic imaginary friend, played with wry sweetness by Elise Kibler—and Keyonna, who is given defiant and tremendously endearing vitality by Kara Young, is the most entertaining and moving aspect of the play and the production, under Kate Whoriskey’s brisk, sensitive direction.
Whoriskey, who proved her affinity for mining working-class anxiety, and the self-destructive behavior it can promote, in helming Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, culls similarly affecting performances working with a text that betrays its author’s relative inexperience, even as it demonstrates substantial talent and heart. Keyonna’s honorable but frustrated brother, Samuel, and their overwhelmed, unstable mom, Ovetta, both embody archetypes that have been drawn with more distinction, but Johnson at least gives them credible, often affecting dialogue that Joshua Boone and Montego Glover, respectively, manage with dexterity and conviction.
Another character, Chantel, is introduced as Samuel’s friend with benefits—she rejects the term “girlfriend”—though her relationship to him and to Keyonna evolves, or is revealed, in ways that can appear contrived to accommodate Keyonna’s own evolution and ongoing sense of conflict. But both Johnson and actress Renika Williams invests Chantel with a palpable ambivalence, and a fundamental decency, that add nuance to her interaction with the others, Ovetta included.
Still, it’s the vivacious Young—who shone as another precocious, underprivileged teen in last year’s LAByrinth Theater Company/Atlantic Theater Company staging of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Halfway Bitches Go to Heaven—who gives this production of All the Natalie Portmans its yearning soul. Even when her Keyonna is sulking, or seems out of options, you never count her out. If Johnson’s play is not a perfect showcase for the actress, or the playwright herself, it leaves little doubt of their potential.
All the Natalie Portmans opened February 24, 2019, at the MCC Theater Space and runs through March 29. Tickets and information: mcctheater.org
