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review When most people think of African-American theatre in Los Angeles, they think of gospel musicals - "Mama, I Want to Sing", "He Say … She Say … But What Does God Say?", any number of melodramas featuring downsized R&B singers or The Guy Who Was On That Sitcom in 1982. That's just the surface of black theatre in Los Angeles - not the reality. Each year, myriad new plays go up at Unity Players Ensemble, the William Grant Still and Watts Towers Arts Centers, the Towne Street Theatre and West Angeles Christian Church. (You wouldn't know it by reading the L.A. Times ... you'd better read the L.A. Watts Times instead.) The action's not confined south of Pico: it's also in Hollywood and the Valley. While the touring, weeping melodramas enjoy spectacular success, it's the small stages that produce challenging and questioning theatre. Occasionally, you see a play that wants to walk in both worlds -- a play like "When The Past Comes Back", now at the Complex. Mildred Dumás' drama is nearly melodrama. On the plus side, it employs 16 African-American actresses double-cast in eight roles. On the minus side, its psychological inquiry rarely pricks its characters' skins. We're at the big, big house of Sybil, a successful real estate broker in Baton Rouge. (The set looks very Leimert Park.) We're here for the 30-year reunion of seven Grambling University graduates, all sorority sisters. The upper tenth of the talented tenth, they were born to a postwar black middle class and have become even more prominent than their parents were: we have a doctor (Sylvia Webb-White), two top businesswomen (Crystal Nix, Reva Jordan), a criminal defense attorney (Jennifer Dove), a psychiatrist (Dumás), a popular novelist (Shani Gadson) and the wife of the mayor of Atlanta (Gayle LaRone). But an eighth sister has killed herself, haunted by the memory of a horrible campus secret from the late 1960s. Sybil wants her sisters to confront it; no one wants to face the truth. Dumás spends the first scene credibly revealing the backstories of the characters; the second scene is all monologues, gasps and melodrama. Everyone has a secret; unfortunately, they all tell us about it. "What do you do when the past comes back?" Margaret asks. Paulette: "Sometimes you drink." She rises from her chair. "I am an alcoholic." (Looooong monologue; chewing of scenery, flats, cels, maybe even some insulation.) That's the play's worst moment; Act Two is more involving, with Dove putting in a multifaceted turn as the lawyer Lathea, who wants to cover everything up. The play becomes a potboiler, and Dum ás cranks the suspense up high; the end does make you grip your armrest. But as the curtain falls, we know we've seen a soap opera. A compelling plot can't hide clichéd characters for very long, and those clichés push "When The Past Comes Back" in the direction of the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. "When The Past Comes
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