Cast, creative team almost make up for script weaknesses in 'Magnolia'

Regina Taylor might have substituted magnolias for cherries and relocated the action from mid-19th century Russia to mid-20th century Atlanta, but the actress/playwright retains the essence of Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" in her faithfully re-imagined update, "Magnolia."

It isn't the first time Taylor has tackled Chekhov. "Drowning Crow," her adaptation of "The Seagull" premiered in 2002 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, where Taylor is an artistic associate. Goodman's world premiere of "Magnolia" is a handsome affair, with an A-list creative team that includes director Anna D. Shapiro and set designer Todd Rosenthal, both of whom won Tony Awards for "August: Osage County." It also includes a compelling pair of leading actors in John Earl Jelks and Annette O'Toole, along with fine supporting work from John Judd, Roxanne Reese, Ernest Perry Jr. and Tory O. Davis.

The weak link is Taylor's script.

Like the play that inspired it, "Magnolia" is about change, the old world order giving way to the new. And in this case, it's race that animates the evolution. A provocative, ever-relevant topic, it's poorly served by weakly conceived characters, unnecessary subplots and inexplicable song breaks incorporating the likes of "Sixteen Tons," "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall" and "Bye Bye Blackbird" that stall the narrative.

That said, Taylor has penned some vivid monologues and duologues. Reese's character recalling how she lost the part of Mammy in "Gone With the Wind" to Hattie McDaniel is particularly entertaining and the confrontation in the second act between O'Toole's character and Judd's absolutely crackles. But even Shapiro's firm hand can't make these individual blossoms into a keepsake bouquet.

Taylor sets the play in 1963 Atlanta and centers the action around the Forests, an old, moneyed family whose tangled roots entwine the descendants of slave owners and the descendants of slaves, all of whom have called the family's Magnolia Estate home at various points in their lives.

As a young woman, free spirit Lily Forest (O'Toole, whose bristling performance comes straight from the gut) chafed at the constraints southern society imposed on women. Her privileged upbringing allowed her to shake them off and adopt the persona of European Bohemian. Now middle-aged and divorced with a teenage daughter named Anna (Caitlin Collins), Lily returns home to find her mother ailing and the family estate facing foreclosure thanks to the inept management of her brother Beau (Judd), a man fully aware of his incompetence.

An old family friend - savvy realtor Thomas (a nicely nuanced Jelks, expressing defiance and despair with equal conviction) - offers them a way out. Thomas - whose memories of life on the Magnolia Estate are far from pleasant - suggests selling the estate to a developer catering to white homeowners fleeing the increasingly integrated Atlanta. It's advice Thomas himself intends to pursue once Atlanta's Peyton Wall, a barricade erected by the mayor to separate white and black neighborhoods, comes down. Lily, however is reluctant to sell. That's puzzling, seeing as the estate for her symbolizes gender oppression as surely as it symbolizes racial oppression for Thomas.

Significantly, most of the action alternates between a pair of restaurants: Black Pearl's catering to Atlanta's black citizens and Kerry's, owned by longtime Forrest family friend William (John Hines), whose family has weathered social and economic storms by adapting to the change in climate, but who refuses to drink from the same fountain as blacks. Pearl's patrons include former Forest family cook Maya (Tyla Abercrumbie), a college-bound waitress determined to change her life, and her suitor Meshach (a sympathetic Davis), a Morehouse University accounting major "who can't make things add up." Then there's aging chanteuse Carlotta (Reese, who makes sassiness refined); Paul (Cliff Chamberlain), a guitar-strumming Freedom Rider and the object of Anna's affection, and Samuel (Perry), a nonagenarian butler suspicious of change.