Flex
Candice Jones
San Francisco Playhouse
The squeaks and stomps of tennies across maple, the grunts and grinds of girls blocking others bodies, and the sudden silence and swoosh of aiming and shooting for the basket fill the electric air as San Francisco Playhouse becomes a high school gym full of young women’s dreams of a state, basketball championship and maybe a chance for the newly formed WNBA. In the West Coast premiere of Candice Jones’ Flex, these five Black teens in rural, 1998 Arkansas are also trying to survive more than just the opposing team’s scoring. Swirling in their heads and lives are issues present, past, and near future that would defeat many a would-be champion, but these team members are not about to give in or give-up to what life has dealt them or to what they themselves have done to sabotage their possibilities of success. Margo Hall directs a rollicking and riveting, hard-hitting and heart-warming Flex, SF Playhouse’s latest production sporting a cast of superstars.
Regionals are around the corner, and the Lady Trains of Plainnole, Arkansas have their sights set on sailing through their way on to State, hoping finally to repeat the school’s championships in ’74 and ’81. They all took the Coach’s “no drinking, no smoking, no sex” pledge at the beginning of the season — determined to avoid last year’s disaster when three starters in their senior year became pregnant — but one, key member is now in her early weeks of future motherhood. To support her and to show Coach that the decision to exclude the pregnant girl from the team is wrong, the girls have gathered in teammate a dirt court to practice their routines while wearing fake, pregnant bellies. Warming up in a line dance of smooth, sassy moves, they chant a repeated, “Whatcha goin’ do? This belly can’t hold me!”
But beyond the threat of Coach Pace’s seemingly final decision, the team has other fissures that could break apart their cohesion and concentration. Team captain, sure-shooter, and dribbling diva Starra seethes with resentment of the California newcomer, Sidney, whose star reputation crossed the continent with her, already attracting top-ranked college scouts to watch her — scouts Starra so desperately wants to notice her. Her cousin, Cherise (newly licensed youth minister), and teammate Donna are having a teen fling; but Cherise is upset Donna’s going to use an academic scholarship to attend university in far-off, sin city, New Orleans.
And Captain Starra is also ticked big time at April for breaking the team pledge and getting pregnant. Secrets of sins much worse from both the past and the present will not much longer remain hidden even as the girls tear it up on the court as they pass and pivot, drill and dribble, stop and shoot with eye-popping speed, skill, and spunk.
On top of all else, each of these girls faces very real pressures and limitations placed on them by families (and sometimes family history) and by a community aching for a trophy and also steeped in ultra-conservative values.
Camille Collaço is the pregnant April who is bound and determined to pull her weight on this team one way or another. Many forces are at battle within her as she contemplates her next steps. Collaço captures with doggedness and passion her aims struggles and captures as well as our hearts.
Besides her court capabilities, Cherise (Emma Gardner) wants to spur the team to victory both now and for eternity by baptizing them all, washing away their jealousies and the betrayals that seem to be popping up like corn among the team. But for all her purity of soul, her heart definitely does throb for Donna (Courtney Gabrielle Williams); and the two are not above ‘going parking’ and stealing an occasional kiss in Donna’s car. Besides their mutual attraction, the two share a secret about one teammate’s plan to eliminate another from the team; and their joint dilemma is what to do about that and still be sure the team stays as one.
Paige Mayes’ Sidney brings a sense of style and sophistication that unmasks both her West Coast upbringing and her own family’s financial status. Sidney is obviously a star-in-the-making who is welcomed and admired by her new teammates — all save Starra. While trying to win over these Southerners by learning their lingo, chants, and coordinated moves (like arms rising, falling, and hips slowly swirling to the beat of their music), Sidney’s own patience can only go so far with Starra’s pointed taunts and insults; and she is not unwilling to raise a fist if needed.
But the star of the show (just ask her character if you doubt it) is definitely Santeon Brown as the jiving, trash-talking, limber-moving Starra who is a proven weapon on the team, if and when she can stay focused. Starra is near frantic to get out of this “dirt and dust” town and to make it big in the world of basketball — something her deceased mother was not able to do even though she was once the town’ s high school wonder on the court.
Starra frequently looks up in the night sky and talks to her mama, providing some of the most moving and heartfelt/heart-breaking moments of the evening. In her mind, her aggressive moves in the gym (and maybe outside the gym, too) are just following what her mama taught her: “Everybody play a lil foul; everybody play a lil dirty; basketball is a contact sport.” With eyes set firm and fists clasped, Santeon Brown’s Starra spits with confidence, “My foul stays invisible … A foul don’t exist if a whistle don’t blow.” But what happens if this time a whistle does blow, especially by one of your teammates?
Santeon Brown is a powerhouse on the evening’s stage as her Starra learns some tough lessons on and off the court and as she inspires us with a teen’s rocky but successful arc into young adulthood.
Rounding out the impressive cast is Halili Knox as the kind of Coach we can only wish every girl on a sports team could have. Her Francine Pace is tough as nails in her demands and discipline on her girls and yet also tender-hearted when it comes to coaching them through the trials of teenage years.
The combined excitement of the script and the acting comes to life on another Bill English, big-scoring set design with a split-stage gym/backyard basketball court transforming to a full gym straight from our own high school memories. The Playhouse’s oft-used turntable switches the scene to a sleepover and to a country road where a blue convertible rambles down the road. Ray Oppenheimer’s lighting and Ray Archie’s sound designs complete the inside and outside realities, with all that’s missing are the smells we all associate with each. Girls’ on-court, back-yard, and hanging-out attires are teen-and-period-perfect, given the costumes designed by Jasmine Milan Williams.
For all the fast pace of the four quarters of Margo Hall’s spot-on, sensitive direction, the second half bogs down a bit here and there; and some dialogue gets lost in a car trip when the radio blasts as it really would in a car full of teen girls (but too loud for all audience members to hear everything they are saying).
But all is forgiven when the final few minutes of the play’s fourth quarter speeds through the four quarters of the state championship, with the Playhouse’s audience at that point full of whoops and hollers cheering on their now, new-favorite team and their appreciation for fun night of Candice Jones’ Flex.
Rating: 4 E
Flex continues in a two-hour, twenty-minute, (one intermission) West Coast premiere production running through May 2, 2026, at San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post Street, San Francisco. Tickets are available online at www.sfplayhouse.org or by phone at 415-677-9596.
Photo Credits: Jessica Palopoli
