One-actor shows can be dicey propositions under the best of circumstances.  Their seeming lack of variety, personalities, and action can put off jaded modern audiences with short attention spans.  However, when the right material in the right venue meets a transcendent performer it becomes a miracle of solo magic.  Jubilee Theatre provides just the right alchemy in their resplendent production of Charlayne Woodard’s Pretty Fire.

This is actor and playwright Woodard’s (better known for her film and television roles) first of four solo plays she has written, and the piece won awards from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle and N.A.A.C.P. Charlayne (played by Ebony Marshall-Oliver in the Jubilee Theatre performance) tells a vivid and poignant coming of age story in1950s-60s Albany, NY, and Georgia.  Old standards and gospel songs intersperse neat vignettes from the tale of her premature birth, grade school happenings, to pastoral visits to her grandparents in “The South.”  There are some tense, downer moments, detailing racism that is casual (a schoolyard taunt), and not so much (burning crosses), as well as neighborhood predators. But a sense of familial love, triumph, and joy dominates the mood throughout. Jubilee artistic director, Tre Garrett directs with a keen sense of how to elicit deep emotion and stage limited character productions (see: the brilliant Topdog Underdog).

Of course the crux of this play’s success lands squarely on the more than capable Marshall-Oliver’s shoulders.  It is crystal clear from the moment she steps through Michael Pettigrew’s arcing sunbeam-styled set and sings the word “joyful” (a chill-inducing version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”) that she is the real deal.   She has a soaring, powerful voice that demands even more songs than this play contains.  Her bushels of personality, likeability, and charm transfix the audience, and her incredible characterizations and impersonations are more like miraculous embodiments as she whirls, contorts, and dances around the stage.

It is a singular joy in every sense of the word to witness this show, and, as Garrett tells us, it is a powerful and important message to young women about perseverance delivered by one woman to all.