Review: ‘Knock Me a Kiss’ at M Ensemble Is The Embrace We Need Right Now

Dina Lewis as Yolande and Jean Hyppolite as Jimmy Lunceford in M Ensemble’s “Knock Me a Kiss” at the Sandrell Rivers Theater through Sunday, April 27. (Photo by Christa Ingram/Courtesy M Ensemble)

There’s much at play in M Ensemble’s “Knock Me a Kiss” on stage at the Sandrell Rivers Theater.

Notwithstanding, the company had to push back the production to April due to what it stated was “unforeseen delays with county funding.” While its season usually starts in February, this is the first production of Florida’s oldest still-operating Black theater company, now in its 54th season.

It was worth the wait. Playwright Charles Smith gives André L. Gainey, the production’s director and M Ensemble’s artistic director, plenty to work with along with a cast that revels in the depth of Smith’s characters.

Yolande Du Bois (Dina Lewis) and Jimmy Lunceford (Jean Hyppolite) after a night on the town in the Du Bois’s Harlem apartment living room. (Photo by Christa Ingram/Courtesy M Ensemble)

The show is loosely based on real people and events, a fictional comedy-drama with the backdrop of 1928 and a slice of life during the Harlem Renaissance. 

W.E.B. Du Bois (Charles Reuben), educator and leader, plays matchmaker for his daughter, Yolande (Dina Lewis), and Countee Porter Cullen (Cameron Holder), one of the finest poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Du Bois sees the marriage as “the perfect union of Negro talent, brains, and beauty.”

Du Bois’s 26-year-old daughter has different ideas: she wants to move to Baltimore to become a high school teacher and build her career. Until she leaves, however, she’s dancing the night away with Jimmy Lunceford (Jean Hyppolite), a former high school teacher who has decided that he’d rather try to make it as a musician than hold down a steady job. 

We meet the oozing with sexual energy Lenora (Tyquisha Ariel Braynen), a brash and no-holds-barred confidante who is quick to give her best friend Yolande advice. We learn of the reason for Nina Du Bois’s (Lela Elam) mental illness, the melancholic mother and wife who hasn’t recovered from the death of her 18-month-old son years before.

Nina (Lela Elam) and W.E.B. Du Bois (Charles Reuben) listen to what’s going on with daughter Yolande (Dina Lewis) in Charles Smith’s “Knock Me a Kiss.” (Photo by Christa Ingram/Courtesy M Ensemble)

Smith’s play has many layers: the realities of the Black experience during the 1920s, class among race, marrying for prestige and money in lieu of love, and stories of segregation – it tackles race, love, and ambition.

He keeps many of his scenes to two characters and in these pairings, allows a more intimate window; it is a construction device that works well.

Without making light of any of it, Smith offers up a rich comedy and Gainey (who played Du Bois in the M Ensemble 2014 production at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Center) deftly finds a way to keep the drama simmering underneath while the comedy rises to the top.

Hyppolite as Jimmy Lunceford lights up the stage in every scene he’s in. So engaging in last season’s “Bourbon at the Border” as Charlie Thompson, here Hyppolite is absolutely entrancing as the bandleader whom the playwright has given so many glorious comic moments, none of which Hyppolite squanders. 

His entrance at the top of the play with Lewis as Yolande is packed with excitement, as he speaks the lyrics to Louis Jordan’s recording of “Knock Me a Kiss”: “I like cake and no mistake/but baby if you insist, I’ll cut out cake, just for your sake/baby, c’mon knock me a kiss.”

Yolande Du Bois (Dina Lewis), right, is at odds with new husband, Countee Cullen (Cameron Holder), left, while her parents, Nina (Lela Elam) and W.E.B. Du Bois (Charles Reuben) try to figure out what’s going on. (Photo by Christa Ingram/Courtesy M Ensemble)

His Jimmy is gruff, yet sensitive and elicits sympathy when he realizes that he’s no match for the educated Cullen and in a different class than the intellectual upper crust DuBois family. 

Lewis as Yolande dreams of a life sailing in first class on her honeymoon to Paris. The princess doesn’t only want a man’s riches but the whole package –  a husband with money that will romance her. She tells Jimmy: “I want a wedding that corresponds to my stature.” She has demands and requests: “I want a diamond engagement ring, and I want a wedding ring. I want a church wedding with lotsa flowers and ushers and bridesmaids.” 

Lewis finds a way to touch on every aspect of the spoiled rich girl’s dreams and aspirations – like wanting her own career, while marrying a man with whom she can enjoy life. When the character has real world heartbreak presented to her, Lewis is able to convey that more than convincingly.

Jean Hyppolite as the Don Juan of Harlem, bandleader Jimmy Lunceford in M Ensemble’s “Knock Me a Kiss” at the Sandrell Rivers Theater through Sunday, April 27. (Photo by Christa Ingram/Courtesy M Ensemble)

Smith has written Lenora as a character so brash she can make everyone blush – giggles and sounds of “whoaaaa” were common from the audience. Braynen chews on every word, her comic timing and delivery so spot on. She uses every ounce of her body in the role, too, showing a gift for physical comedy.

Holder’s Cullen in the first act can play his Countee as a “nice young man,” but in the second act, all bets are off as he sashays across the stage filling his trunk with the perfect suits for his trip to Paris with his best friend and best man leaving his new wife in the dust. While it may be the height of a stereotypical characterization, it works within the context of the play.

Elam as the half-crazed wife finds moments of lucidity where she speaks of her life in Atlanta during segregation, but it’s hard to get past the robotic and one-dimensional way in which the actress portrays this fragile woman. She has been outstanding in so many other regional performances; here’s hoping she can find a way to exhibit the emptiness and blank-eyed stares with a more realistic approach. 

Reuben as W.E.B. Du Bois adapts an affectatious way of speaking, that upper-crust voice, with glasses on his up-in-the-air nose, which makes you admire him and loathe him at the same time. Reuben is at his best as Du Bois during a quid pro quo and some of his other transactional conversations. If Cullen marries his daughter, perhaps he’ll be inclined to complete a letter of recommendation that the young man had requested for a prestigious fellowship. “I believe this fulfills this part of the bargain,” says Du Bois as he hands Cullen the recommendation. Reuben’s sly interpretation adds a bit of mystery.

W.E.B. Du Bois (Charles Reuben) has high hopes for his protégé poet Countee Cullen (Cameron Holder) in “Knock Me a Kiss” at M Ensemble at the Sandrell Rivers Theater through Sunday, April 27. (Photo by Christa Ingram/Courtesy M Ensemble)

“Knock Me a Kiss” has a realistic, multi-level stage design by Mitchell Ost, with set construction by Trevor Garcia. Quanikqua Q. Bradshaw-Bryant’s lighting adds mood at the right times – brighter lights during the levity, more muted tones when appropriate. Flapper-style dresses and fur stoles in the costuming bring to life the period and the soundtrack of the era Cab Calloway and Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s “Stormy Weather” had many in the audience singing along in between scenes. 

In history, the wedding of Du Bois’s daughter and Cullen in 1928 was the Royal Wedding of Harlem during the Renaissance years. The marriage would end in divorce two years later, a disappointment to Dr. Du Bois who felt that he had let down an entire race of people.

There isn’t much to be disappointed about in M Ensemble’s “Knock Me a Kiss.” It’s insightful, uplifting, and gloriously funny  — what a great way to take the blues of today away.

WHAT: “Knock Me a Kiss” by Charles Smith

WHERE: M Ensemble at the Sandrell Rivers Theater, 6103 NW 7th Ave., Miami.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. Through April 27.

COST: $36, $26 seniors and students (plus a $4.25 fee).

INFORMATION: 305-705-3210 or themensemble.com

 ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com