Ntozake Shange's latest musical work … is a workshop production, and it looks it. "Spell #7: A Geechee Quick Magic Trance Manual" is a fecund garden that badly needs trimming. Curiously, the weaker scenes in this musical essay appear to be edited far better than the strong numbers. The best scenes are diluted by Shange's attempts to say one thing in many different forms as she can.

This musical evening is set in a bar-restaurant hangout for black theatrical performers. Although the work focuses on individual poetic soliloquys,… this is more of a play than anything Shange has had staged in the past. At least the actors are talking to each other here in intervals and suggesting that the words have some relevance to the action.

But Shange makes it clear that she values her verse much more than she values her characters. Thus the first act of the musical...