When a marriage seems at a standstill and the fire doesn’t seem to burn as before, could the grass be greener on the other side – or outside the relationship?
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J’Caryous Johnson’s stageplay “Cheaper To Keep Her” explores that with an ensemble cast and music by an award winning singer.
The play, which runs through Nov. 18 at the Arie Crown Theater, is actually the real life story of one of Johnson’s prot%uFFFDg%uFFFDs who was suddenly told one day by her spouse that he no longer wanted her.
“We were able to collaborate and create an amazing play out of her story and ultimately
get a chance to help her heal through the transformation process of developing this show,” Johnson told the Defender.
Multi-award winning crooner Brian McKnight stars in the play as Raymond Mays, a man who decides he wants to call it quits with his wife, Morgan, played by actress Vivica A. Fox.
Raymond Mays knit-picks at his relationship and comes to the conclusion that it know longer has the value he once thought it had.
What he discovered, though, was that “his life has no value without the wife he has,” Johnson said.
Mays “ultimately finds out that not only it’s cheaper to keep her but more importantly it would have been easier to love her,” the playwright said.
“It takes two whole human beings to have a whole relationship. And if one of you become a half, then you begin to drain the other one and often time complain about the other one and don’t realize that you are the leech,” said Johnson, who also owns an acting school in Houston.
Fox said the play is a good lesson about keeping “love alive.”
“I play a wife that gets involved in her marriage and she loses herself,” Fox told the Defender, explaining that she hasn’t played a wife role in a “long time.”
Fox co-produced this play and also starred in Johnson’s “What Ever She Wants.”
Her switch to the stage is a change from the big screen and television roles she’s played, but Fox said this production isn’t a completely foreign experience for her.
“(It’s a) romantic comedy stage play that is a sit-com, soap opera and a concert all in one,” the former actress on “Days of Our Lives” and “Out All Night” TV shows said.
“I know in plays there’s a couple of different elements that people love to see … good
music, you know, good acting and a good script,” she said.
This play has those winning elements, the “Independence Day” and “Set It Off” star explained.
McKnight said the play offers a different side to him that his fans and admirers aren’t as familiar with.
“For me (the play) is really about stretching the boundaries of what people think they know about what I do,” the singer, songwriter and radio show host told the Defender.
Playing Mays allows him to “be in front of my audience in a different way. … I love being in front of an audience on stage.”
Raymond Mays is kind of like “the old me who didn’t know what he wanted or what he was trying to do,” McKnight confessed.
“Relationships is one of the hardest things to do on the planet. It’s easy to get into them, much more difficult to get out of them,” he said of his character. Raymond Mays and McKnight know a thing or two about love’s heartaches.
“This (play) is the ultimate story of not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone,” McKnight said. “I’ve been on the moving end of that couple of that a couple of times.”
The acting and the story line notwithstanding, Johnson said McKnight’s music helps the play to soar.
“It just elevates the show to a place that it can’t be compared to any other play,” he said of the R&B star’s score.
Johnson added that the combination of McKnight and Fox “complement” his writing.
More than entertainment, the play has a moving affect on relationships, he said.
“You will laugh, you will cry, but more importantly you will fall in love. And if you have fallen out of love, you will fall back in love with each other after the show,” Johnson said.
Copyright 2010 Chicago Defender
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