‘Beef, No Chicken’ a Full Walcott Serving

Delightful characters and the musical cadences of West Indies accents make even the detours fun in Nobel Prize-winning author Derek Walcott’s comedy, “Beef, No Chicken,” at the Lee Strasberg Creative Center.

Andrene Bonner and director Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter head an impressive ensemble as a sly, good-natured restaurant proprietor and her stubborn auto mechanic brother resisting the modernization--and inevitable corruption--brought by the impending opening of a new highway through their laid-back Trinidad community. Caught up in their struggle over critical property rights are a mayor with delusions of grandeur (Kim Delgado), a shifty developer (Austin Stoker), and a hilariously prissy schoolteacher (Leon Morenzie) courting our heroine despite her loyalty to a long-lost suitor (Jason Fitz-Gerald).

Walcott’s meandering story takes longer than his wry potshots at modernization strictly warrant, and several subplots could easily be trimmed for tighter through-lines. Still, it’s the colorful diversity that makes this island population worth our interest as they rediscover their oldest values in the most unlikely places.

* “Beef, No Chicken,” Lee Strasberg Creative Center, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends March 2. $15. (213) 650-7777. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.