Coconut Cake
by Melda Beaty
Directed by Geovonday Jones
The Black Rep
February 14, 2025
Richard Harris, Richard E. Waits, Joe Hanrahan, Duane Foster
Photo by Keshon Campbell
The Black Rep
The Black Rep’s current production, Melda Beaty’s Coconut Cake, is a character-driven showcase for its performers. It’s almost deceptively simple at first, while ultimately revealing itself to be much more complex as the story plays out. With effective staging and an excellent cast of five, this play holds attention from start to finish with its intriguing tale of aging, regret, conflict, and redemption.
The story has a somewhat unexpected setting–a McDonald’s in Chicago, circa 2010. The fast food restaurant is the setting for a weekly gathering of a group of four men of distinctly different personalities and views of life an relationships. Church deacon Marty (Richard E. Waits) plays chess with Hank (Joe Hanrahan), who was married to Marty’s sister until she died the previous year. Eddie (Duane Foster) seeks out Marty’s help in a conflict with his unseen wife, and Eddie’s longtime friend Joe (Richard Harris)–a real estate developer–stresses about his projects and tenants, and brags about his many relationships with women. The four men swap stories about their lives and about their relationships with women–wives, girlfriends, daughters–even regularly ogling an unseen woman who regularly passes by the McDonald’s every week on her way to work. The fifth member of the cast is a man most of the others refer to as “Gotdamnit”–who appears to not have a permanent home and who they criticize for apparently bothering the woman who passes by. They also trade gossip about one of Joe’s new tenants–a woman who attracts the amorous interests of several men in the area. Through the course of the show, personalities conflicts come to the forefront and long-held secrets are revealed, as some characters are forced to reckon with past regrets and present conflicts.
I don’t want to give away too much, because the gradual unfolding of this story is part of what makes it so powerful. The performances are especially strong from all the players, with Waits and Foster in memorable turns as the “voice of reason” Marty and the conflicted Eddie. Harris, as the outspoken Joe, and Hanrahan as the more softspoken Hank, are also excellent, and Evans is a revelation as the mysterious “Gotdamnit”, whose cryptic messages about life and chess prove to mean more than they first seem to. It’s a first-rate ensemble, well directed and paced by director Geovonday Jones, bringing out every ounce of humor and drama in the intriguing, if possibly a little overlong, script.
The set by Tammy Honesty is an effective representation of the seating area of a McDonald’s restaurant, which works as a suitable background for the action of the play. Tony Anselmo’s lighting adds a convincing sense of realism and occasional mystery to the action, and there’s also excellent work from Alan Phillips on sound. Brandin Vaughn’s costumes are also strong, suiting the characters and the time period well.
I didn’t entirely know what to expect when going into this show, and it has turned out to be a welcome surprise. With a strong message and palpable sense of drama balanced with humor, this is a memorable look at these five characters’ struggles, conflicts, and aspirations. It’s another example of excellence from one of St. Louis’s most consistently strong theatre companies.
Lawrence Evans, Joe Hanrahan
Photo by Keshon Campbell
The Black Rep
The Black Rep is presenting Coconut Cake at Washington University’s A. E. Hotchner Studio Theatre until March 2, 2025