Family secrets exposed and exploded in Asolo Conservatory’s ‘Stick Fly’

Even though a family reunion suggests a light and joyous event (with expected fights and disruptions), you can feel the tension in the air almost before the lights come up on the FSU/Asolo Conservatory production of Lydia Diamond’s “Stick Fly,” about a well-off Black family’s interactions with one another and society at large.

Two adult brothers return to their family’s home on Martha’s Vineyard. The younger brother, Kent, has brought his fiancée, Taylor, but never told anybody about her. It makes you wonder what about her will disappoint his apparently demanding and opinionated parents or trigger some torment from his older brother, Flip, who has his own issues. Flip wants to make sure he arrives before his girlfriend, Kimber, so he can prepare the family that she’s not the kind of woman they might expect. In other words, she isn’t Black.

Their doctor father, Joe, is a man of few words, even fewer about why his wife isn’t with him when he arrives, and everyone is surprised to see Cheryl, the now-grown daughter of the family’s longtime maid, who has agreed to provide help for the weekend get together.

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Diamond’s play, a drama with touches of comedy, has the makings of a soap opera, but it has some serious issues to deal with on race relations and class distinctions among Blacks. The play’s title comes from Taylor’s career as an entomologist, studying flies, requiring honey to hold them in place for observation. The play is meant to do the same with this family so we can better understand them, which it does, to a degree.

Taylor never had the kind of privilege of Kent and Flip, who attended the best schools, and they have trouble understanding some of her issues about class differences among Blacks, to say nothing of her explosive confrontations. Even if Taylor’s tone is strong, everyone acknowledges she usually has a good point to make.

The production, directed by 2008 Conservatory graduate Marcus Denard Johnson, is uneven and struggles at times to find the rhythms of natural spontaneous conversations. Scenes that should feel off-the-cuff seem more calculated or rehearsed. Rebecca Rose Mims, who has some of the play’s best lines as Taylor, often delivers them in a flat manner and a scene that is said to be “heated” doesn’t really feel that way. Still she does make the audience feel something about Taylor.

Mims does have a warm and loving relationship with Rickey Watson Jr. as Kent, a seemingly nice guy who never measures up for his father. Watson conveys a sweet innocence that serves his character well. It’s a good contrast to Ibukun Omotowa, who makes Flip, a plastic surgeon, more of a player who uses his good looks, wealth and status to impress women wherever he goes. He’s the guy who has probably gotten what he wanted most of his life.

What he wants, at least for the moment, is Danielle Vivcharenko, who has a breezy air as Kimber, who may want to be welcomed into the family but isn’t afraid to offer a different point of view or attitude.

As the father, Reuben Wakefield doesn’t get a lot to say. He barks and scowls at times, until late in the play when we finally begin to get a fuller picture of what makes him the way he is as a number of secrets are revealed.

But you’re never in doubt watching Trezure Coles as Cheryl, the family “friend” who has an explosive amount of energy, dealing with an ill mother and trying to figure out her place in the house. Cheryl has a lot on her mind and shoulders, and Coles, who played a fiery suitor in the fall production of “Sense and Sensibility,” makes you feel all of Cheryl’s discomfort and confusion with each new bit of information.

Jeffrey Weber’s set has a homey and beachy appeal, but seems more cramped than what you’d expect from this well-established and prominent family.

The story takes some surprising twists, along with a few you can see coming, but Johnson and his cast keep you interested, if not always fully engaged.

“Stick Fly”

By Lydia Diamond. Directed by Marcus Denard Johnson. Reviewed Jan. 6, FSU/Asolo Conservatory, Cook Theatre, FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Through Jan. 22. Tickets are $25-$35. 941-351-8000; asolorep.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Asolo Conservatory upends family secrets in comic drama ‘Stick Fly’