Penumbra's 'Timbuktu' gets lost along the way

Penumbra Theatre is known for being so consistently excellent that a misfire at the house that Lou Bellamy and August Wilson built has the potential to shock. Such is the case with "On the Way to Timbuktu," an import that opens the company's 2014-2015 season.

Directed by Talvin Wilks, who last season memorably staged "The Ballad of Emmett Till," "Timbuktu" was written by and stars soap-opera star Petronia Paley.

The one-woman show has compelling elements that, by themselves, show Paley's theatrical skill. But the production does not hang together. It feels like a muddled jumble of audition scenes that run on for 75 minutes.

It's a shame that Penumbra's season opener is incoherent because there were high expectations for "Timbuktu" and for Paley, who is returning to her theater roots after becoming known for her roles on TV's "Guiding Light" and "Another World."

"Timbuktu" compares unfavorably to other recent solo shows, including James T. Alfred's recently closed "A Brown Tale" at the Capri Theater and "Seedfolks" at the Children's Theatre, a piece in which Sonja Parks masterfully delineates an entire community that comes together around a garden.

The problems with "Timbuktu" stem mostly from the script. Paley, the playwright, is trying to tell too many stories in different eras and places. There's Africa, Tudor England and contemporary America. The show feels like, to borrow but one image from "Timbuktu," an overloaded camel staggering through the desert.

"Timbuktu" opens strikingly with a masked dance as Paley, in a recorded voice-over, tells us about a woman captured and enslaved in the Sahara, while she enacts the scene. We jump from there to a Shakespeare scholar/professor delivering a lecture. Ostensibly, "Timbuktu" is her story. She has two lovers, a man and a woman. The man, a nationalist poet with whom she travels to Africa, rapes her in the motherland because he's jealous of her other lover.

As an actor, Paley has a decent range. In gestures and intonations, she helps us to see, somewhat clearly, some of her characters. She also is committed, throwing herself fully into the scenes.

That is not enough. As the show ended, with a desperate use of blackface, my daughter, who attended the production with me, wondered what happened. She had dozed off. I told her that it was hard to explain, but her nap was a sort of mercy.