IF YOU GOWhat: “The Haves and the Have Nots.”When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.Where: Memorial Auditorium, 399 McCallie Ave.Admission: $36 (plus fees); $33 groups.Phone: 642-8497.Website: www.ChattanoogaOnStage.com.
Is it possible the family who has everything really doesn’t?
That’s what Tyler Perry’s “The Haves and the Have Nots,” a touring stage play that stops at Memorial Auditorium on Tuesday, suggests.
The part-comedy, part-drama was written, directed and features music by Perry, who is famous for such movies as “Madea’s Family Reunion,” “Madea Goes to Jail” and “Madea’s Big Happy Family.”
“It has a little bit of everything,” said Palmer Williams Jr., an Alabama native and graduate of Knoxville College who stars in the play. “It has a serious storyline, but it’s almost like a slight thriller.”
Williams portrays the butler and chef for a wealthy family. And while he can see the choices the family members make aren’t always the wisest ones, he also is aware of poor judgment used by some people who work for the wealthy family.
His character, he said, “is in the middle being nosy about both ends. I’m able to lend a comic spin on that.”
The part of the butler/chef, Williams said, allows him to “act like a complete idiot.”
“I get paid to act like somebody I’m not,” he said, yet “there’s a lot of me in there.”
The story, according to Williams, also makes the subtle biblical point that one can “do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.”
Perry, he said, was “beamed down from God” to put the “page to the stage.” In other words, he said, Perry often weaves biblical rules and statutes into his stories in an “attractive, thought-provoking, attention-gathering way.”
“They’re wrapped in comedy,” said Williams, who has sung previously in Chattanooga as part of a band at the Bessie Smith Strut and at the WholeNote Restaurant & Lounge. “We don’t beat you over the head with it.”
Such a format, he said, “ministers to people in the audience and us [as actors] each and every time we do it.”
Williams, who recently released his debut CD, “Neo-Saved,” also gets to sing in the production. The all-original, “very radio-friendly” songs, he said, were written by Perry and Elvin Ross, “urban theater’s Rodgers and Hammerstein.”
His number, he said, offers a touch of the blues as he warns a young lady in the show to keep an eye on her husband.