Virginia Stage is one of 4 theaters presenting the world premiere — an important historical comedy, writes Page Laws.

This whole review could be a discussion of the tropes and cliches of Blackness embedded in our play’s title, “Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem.”

But let’s not go straight there.

First, think of “kitchen plays” you may know, those that portray working-class life in a gritty, realistic way (for example, Lynn Nottage’s “Clyde’s,” 2019, done at Norfolk’s Generic Theater last year). Now consider “famous figure” plays you may know (say, Kemp Powers’ “One Night in Miami,” 2013, where Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke crash in a hotel room in 1964 and chat; or Katori Hall’s “The Mountaintop,” 2009, performed in 2014 by Virginia Stage Company, time well spent with an imaginary MLK Jr. the night before his death).

Now blend all these plays together in your mind, and add some raunchiness and pathos and lots of humor, and you have the world premiere play by Jonathan Norton that Virginia Stage is presenting with three other regional theaters: Arkansas’ TheatreSquared, Pittsburgh’s City Theatre Company; and Dallas Theater Center, with VSC holding third stop position within the creative shakedown process.

Edwin Green as young Malcolm Little in his Christian evangelical garb. (Courtesy/J. Stubbs Photography)

What’s unexpected in this famous figure play is the relative youth of our heroes Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, known here as Little or Detroit Red) and Redd Foxx (John Sanford — here, Foxy or Chicago Red): Little is a mere 18 years old, and Foxy is a mere 20.

The author, Norton, doesn’t look that old himself, though as resident playwright and a leader of a major Dallas theater, he probably is. But Norton (in town for the final preview performance, the subject of this review) is birthing this theatrical baby — four times, three out on the road.

Two icons of Black culture — one a political firebrand sacrificed to assassins, and the other a very blue (as in profane) Black comedian — are placed, quite unexpectedly, together to do a menial but respectable job at a budget restaurant in Harlem, 1943, during the Great Migration. (The two figures — Malcolm X and Redd Foxx — did indeed know each other in reality.)

Jordan Williams as young Redd Foxx in a zoot suit. (Courtesy/J. Stubbs Photography)

We are in the midst of America’s ongoing, simmering race war, which is also a personal-fashion-statement war — featuring, for Black men, zoot suits and conk style hairdos or pompadours with or without ducktails. There’s lots of rough language of a sexual nature. (You’ve now been repeatedly warned about the colorful (but often hilarious) language in this play.)

What matters to the success of a historical comedy, however, is not how blue it is but how funny it is and that, as we know from the career of the real Redd Foxx, is all about comic timing.

And our two actors have timing to die for. They are Edwin Green as Malcolm Little and Jordan Williams as Redd Foxx. And for these actors’ timing (assuming it can be taught) we must thank the same graduate school in acting: the University of Arkansas. It’s doubtful VSC’s resident casting director, Emel Ertugrul, had sole sway in casting Green and Williams; any and all involved with casting these two deserve credit for grabbing Equity pros who can keep a two-character production afloat and fast-moving while even looking like the famous men they are portraying.

This lookalike quality enhances the heck out of the performers’ hilarious “invention” of words and phrases that the real Malcolm and the real Foxx would later make personal touchstones. We hear Malcolm saying the phrase “by any means necessary” more than once, though rarely in important circumstances. We hear Foxy discovering with Malcolm’s help the whole routine that any audience member of a certain age will immediately recognize. Picture Redd Foxx stumbling around clutching his heart and shouting (to a distant and unseen woman): “Oh! Oh! Oh! This is the big one, Elizabeth! I’m coming to join you honey! … Oh! It’s the big one!” Foxy is also heard inventing his immortal insult, “Ya big dummy!”

Bits of our two heroes’ real biographies are cleverly and humanely scattered throughout the script. Foxy has issues with his brother who may not still be alive. Little tries out spiritual mentors: Christians first, well before Muslims. We hear snatches of details concerning the oppression of his parents — his father “murdered by white folks for sticking up for his family,” his mother institutionalized as insane after she tried legitimately to collect on the family’s life insurance policy.

These are, of course, some of the distressing details throughout the play that one should be prepared to accept. Malcolm’s feigned onstage sniffing of cocaine is rather disturbing in a different sense, particularly in light of how austere he later became as a member of the Nation of Islam.

But the raunchiness and off-color humor are mostly mitigated by the well-thought-out story line, snatches of history (beyond the kitchen doors) and the marvelous comic timing of our hard-working two-man cast.

If you get queasy at the very thought of health violations in a restaurant, you may need to skip this show. If you get angry at sexist, racist language, same advice.

But if you’re brave enough and admire important historical drama/comedy, don’t skip a moment: Run on down and get your tickets. Look for a neon chicken and prepare for recent American history, fried to perfection.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University.