Madea Goes to Jail
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Madea Goes To Jail is a play written and directed by Tyler Perry. The story is about a African-American grandmother named Mable R. Simmons (Madea) who must deal with a succession of trying events after she ends up in jail for the night, .
[edit] Plot
The play is a full-length production starring Perry as his fully liberated and barely-in-control alter ego, Mabel "Madea" Simmons.
Madea Goes to Jail portrays the experiences of Madea and her family during a time of crisis. Madea is a "no-nonsense" grandmother prone to violence. She talks out of turn at all times and she makes up her own rules. This frequently lands her in jail or in trouble with one person or another. But her truthfulness and loyalty always see her through in the end. Tyler Perry, Madea's actor, doesn’t hesitate to improvise on stage. Members of the audience are well advised to get seated by the beginning of the show, lest they become part of the show as butts of Perry’s impromptu humor.
In the play, Madea's nephew, Sonny, is a hard-working prison employee, married to Vanessa (Chantell Christopher) a career woman who neglects her husband and their infant son. She is also sleeping around, mainly with Sonny's boss, Nate (Ryan Gentles). In the midst of their marital problems and her unfaithfulness it is found that Sonny is not, as he had previously thought, the child's father. When Vanessa, during one of her affairs, leaves the baby in the bathtub and he gets hurt he is taken to the hospital where a friend, and previous love interest of Sonny's, has a DNA test run on the child. Meanwhile, Madea has become foster mother to a rebellious, abused teenage girl, played by Anndretta Lyle belonging to a fellow inmate. In the midst of this strife, Madea's feisty, watchful neighbor Ella Kincaid (Cassi Davis) may be romancing Leo (LaVan Davis), one of Sonny's co-workers.
Madea Goes to Jail is presented in about seven acts and lasts a little over two hours including the fifteen-minute intermission. The first half is the telling of the story of Madea’s family: how some are saved and some are lost, but no one saved or lost without a reason. The second half wraps up the plot with Madea saving the day against a vicious street pimp who wishes to harm/pimp the young teenage girl, who also happens to be his daughter which he well knows, that Madea adopted to help a woman that she met in while in jail.
After the conclusion of the story, the play segues into a free-form comedy consisting of old school musical performances by each of the cast members and spontaneous humor by Perry. This gives each of the players a chance to be the star for a time and show off what they can do and remember the good music of their time.
