Review: 'Charm' at Mixed Blood Theatre is important, if messy, work

Let's be clear: All art is political, whether a work wears its agenda on its sleeve or someplace else. Mixed Blood Theatre, a company founded on equity and inclusion, has been doing strong, avowedly political art for decades.

On Friday, the Minneapolis playhouse opened "Charm" as the closing show of its 40th season. Philip Dawkins' good-looking, two-hour docudrama is ultimately touching and moving, even if it could use some tightening.

Directed like an after-school special by Addie Gorlin — it educates theatergoers about the difficult life of transgender homeless youths — the piece transcends the genre as it introduces us to some characters we grow to care about. The tenderness that "Charm" evokes comes late in the show, and only after a struggle by actors who could have used a few more rehearsals to help them forge a cohesive ensemble.

On its face, "Charm" seems like a contradiction. The play takes place mostly in an etiquette class taught by a transgender elder to a klatch of unruly homeless trans- and cisgender youths at a center in Chicago. At the outset, young people are arguing simultaneously and loudly over each other. They seem on the edge of violence. Mama Darleena Andrews (Julienne "Mizz June" Brown) comes into the room. Her job is ostensibly to bring quiet and order to this scene of discomfiting chaos, but also to their lives.

The characters include statuesque Ariela (Rehema Mertinez); Jonelle (Alyssandra Taylor), who has a fondness for colorful wigs; Victoria (Jennifer Waweru) and her acerbic partner, Donnie (Ryan Colbert), who is fresh from jail and misses a friend there; Lady (Jay Owen Eisenberg), a nervous stutterer; and Logan (Nathan Barlow), a newbie and innocent.

Most of these characters have had very hard scrapes, and it takes some time — actually, a little too much time, in both script and production — for them to let their defenses down.

In terms of equity and inclusion, "Charm," which is based on real-life trans icon Gloria Allen, is a cause for celebration. The show has a full complement of trans actors, who give it a feeling of authenticity. Their presence onstage also helps to validate an often misunderstood and persecuted part of our human family.

In terms of acting and stagecraft, the result is, well, a little more mixed. Some of the actors, like Barlow and Waweru, have strong training, and know how to slide into the skin of their characters. Others, including lead actor Brown, are not able to fully lose themselves in their roles. On opening night, Brown was a little at sea, and often seemed to be posing.

In fact, when the chaos subsides at the outset of the play, it's not because she is commanding or a major presence. It's because it's in the script. Fortunately, there is strength around her, including Barlow's sweet Logan and a lot of humorous hamming by Taylor's Jonelle.

While the tension between authenticity and craft prevents the show from becoming a tour de force, "Charm" is still important work. For some theatergoers, it offers an education and a window into a world of hardship and privation. For others, it offers validation, and a chance to be seen as human, in all the messiness, warmth and complications that that label implies.

rpreston@startribune.com

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Twitter: @rohanpreston