By Michael Buzzelli
Malcolm Little (Edwin Green) meets John Sanford (Trey Smith-Mills) in a famous restaurant and jazz club on Nicholas Avenue in New York’s Harlem in Jonathan Norton’s “Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem.”
Both men became famous, but each took very divergent pathways to their success and notoriety. Malcolm Little went on to be Malcolm X, and John Elroy Sanford went on to be Redd Foxx.
While both worked as dishwashers at the restaurant, Norton gets to create the relationship from whole cloth. Take Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile,” which posits that Pablo Picasso not only met but also hung out with Albert Einstein, and set it in Harlem, 1943.
There is a vein of truth that runs through the story.
In the 1940s, Foxx befriended Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X, a fellow dishwasher at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem. Both men had reddish hair, so Sanford was called “Chicago Red” after his hometown and Malcolm was known as “Detroit Red.” In his autobiography, Malcolm X refers to Redd Foxx as “the funniest dishwasher on this earth.”
Norton takes a lot of liberties, drawing on Foxx’s material from stand-up and his sitcom, “Sanford and Son.” The Norman Lear show, based on the BBC “Steptoe and Son,” ran on NBC from January 14, 1972, to March 25, 1977.
Little, who is a year younger than Foxy, calls Foxy, “Pops.” There is a mention of a shop girl named Elizabeth, where Foxy creates his “I’m coming, Elizabeth,” dying bit, and Foxy crooks his hands and says, “I got the Arthur-itis.”
P.S. Even though Foxx’s lines are iconic, it’s a stretch to ask audiences to remember a show that went off the air 49 years ago.
In the story version of their lives, their friendship is a love/hate/love sort of thing. Both men save each other in different ways.
There’s a repugnant recurring gag about the kitchen sewer backing up that becomes more important by the end of the show.
While there are a lot of venomous conversations between them, there’s a very sweet ending.
Fittingly, Green is a charismatic character. He is handsome and charming, even when his character is committing some vile deeds. He eats chicken off of discarded plates, sniffs cocaine like it’s candy, and goes to work for a local mafia don.
Smith-Mills is more than just comic relief, though he gets a lot of mileage by making silly walks, putty-like facial gestures, and other crazy contortions of his body. There is also a deepening of his character, which comes through in his superb acting.
Kimberly Powers’ scenic design is brilliant, capturing the nuances of a dingy dungeon of a Harlem kitchen in 1943. It’s all greens and creams, with silver accessories. Brodie Jasch’s props are all perfectly placed.
Director Dexter J. Singleton draws nuanced performances from two terrific actors.
While the play’s ending is poignant, it seems to sneak up on you pretty quickly, glossing over many details about both men. There’s a “greatest hits” flash forward that zips by so quickly it takes a minute to realize what’s going on. Then, it’s over.
Even though it runs only 95 minutes with no intermission, it could probably use a trim of a few scenes and an expansion of the final scenes.
If you are a fan of Foxx or X, “Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem” is an interesting divergence. The number one reason to go is to see two men doing some fantastic work on a well-crafted set.
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“Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem” runs until February 8 at the City Theatre, 1300 Bingham Street, Pittsburgh, PA. For tickets and additional information, click here.
