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E-mail StoryUnorthodox plays to premiere this weekend at Fox Theater
| Thursday, May 8 2008 10:08 AM
Last Updated: Thursday, May 8 2008 10:02 AM
If a musical about pimps and Christians doesn’t raise a few eyebrows — especially one starring “Darke” Gable, a rapping Rodney King (yes, that Rodney King) and late ’60s soul group The Delfonics — then heaven knows what will.
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What: Gospel musicals “Pimp: Even Players Must Praise Him” and “Going Through It, To Get To It!”
When: “Pimp,” 8 p.m. Saturday; “Going Through It,” 4 p.m. Sunday.
Where: Fox Theater, 2001 H St.
Tickets: $36 each show. Available at the box office or through Vallitix locations, vallitix.com or 322-5200.
Details: 324-1369
Photos:
“Pimp: Even Players Must Praise Him” and “Going Through It, To Get To It!” premiere this weekend at the Fox Theater, then head for a two-year U.S. and Caribbean tour. Riverside playwright and producer Sid Burston says he wanted to bring them here first because Bakersfield needs more black-themed entertainment. He also wants his urban plays to draw a broad audience.
“Pimp” follows a church’s war on prostitution, but its pastor discovers a pimp controls his wife.
Burston wants to show young black men and women the media’s glamorization of pimp life doesn’t cover its stark pain and abuse.
“This is not necessarily a life they would want to embrace,” says Sid’s wife, Betty Burston.
Rodney King plays Whisper, a pimp’s bodyguard. He helps the pimp stalk the hero, a fellow pimp who eventually redeems himself.
“(The pimp) sends me to do all the dirty work that he don’t want to get his hands dirty,” King says of his character.
By dirty work, he means kicking his enemy around.
“I don’t kill the guy, but beat him up pretty bad,” he says, laughing.
Burston, who plays rival pimp “Darke” Gable (Burston’s nickname thanks to his likeness to Clark Gable), met King through a client who wanted funding for a biopic on one of L.A.’s most controversial figures.
“The minute I put him on as the headline at my show in Vegas, ticket sales went through the roof,” Burston says.
Burston wrote the script for King’s movie, which follows the lives of families affected by the 1992 Los Angeles riots that King’s videotaped beating sparked. They’re hoping a major studio will pick it up. King says he wants to play his father.
Asked about the impact the riots had on his life, King replies, “If there wasn’t any violence in the country, if we hadn’t went through what we went through, what we still went through, we wouldn’t be the great America we are today.”
Sunday’s musical comedy “Going Through It, To Get To It!” tracks a wealthy family forced to take in relatives who lost everything to Hurricane Katrina. The snobs eventually overcome their misgivings and realize the blessing of family.
Burston stars as slick criminal Eddie Penderpass. King plays a security guard.
The plays share a cast of 48 singers, dancers and actors. Cynda Williams of “Mo’ Better Blues” co-stars. Major Harris and Pat Palmer of The Delfonics perform in a nightclub scene.
For the last three years, King’s been working on his acting career. Acting comes naturally, he says.
The 43-year-old King, now living in Rialto, is father to three daughters. He doesn’t consider himself a Christian. King does feel a “godly” spirit during the show.
He doesn’t mind being a curiosity. He was surprised to see so many people lining up to see him star in a Burston production in Las Vegas.
“They say, ‘We like the show, we like the show’ and it’s like ‘more, more, more’ when I did my little rap,” he says.