Wanted: A Good Drama of Miscegenation
Wanted: A Good Drama of Miscegenation TOO MIEN! Review by JOSEPH T. SHIt'l.r- t STRANGE FRUIT. M, Lillimn Smith, with :he m**i*t*mee */ Father Smith. Set* by Gear/* J ml. tut F ir» ruled and tin...
...Unfortunately, those that put together the words, music, dances, and costumes did not rue to the opportunities...
...The "significant lilence," Ferrer introduces in ways the reverse of masterly...
...Good old Harrison, beyond comparison, good old Harrison U."—some of the songs would make good varsity rouse, and should appeal to the college boys in town for the holiday...
...of the book...
...Celling up in the morning and hinting at another (but successful) musical isn't the for-iiii¦ Im for a hit, especially when, as we watch the various persons get out of tied (we watch through filmy gauze) one gay girlie gets into the bath-tub with her shoes on...
...COLD WINTIK ¦THE DAY BEFORE SPRING...
...but history repeats itself...
...The stiuatinn in "Strange Fruit" is the converse of that in Eugene O'Neill's "All God's Chillun Got Wings.' In the earlier "problem, play," the white girl Ella is driven by her sense of inferiority to the Negro msn...
...Veeinmee by Mile* White...
...Walking up-aisle at intermission, a woman near me said "It's like 'Oklahoma', only everything's different...
...J. T. S. A ION...
...The best one can say is that the new musical is clear, occasionally sweet, rarely clever...
...Praeented and etayed by John C. Wilauu...
...The midgets come with the carnival, of course, but the sex is obtruded any »nd everywhere...
...A* a director, however, he does not merely fumble, he lets the production fall...
...he reappears as a clown...
...Kath, wondering what to do, is spelled by the book as its author interprets their future life, in a ballet in which Hugh Laing and Mary Ellen Moylan do their best to put spirit into the dull, unimaginative, repetitious choreograpby...
...daubs of thickly laid background, with Christian piety in a losing fight along the color line...
...In this play— which, everyone assumes, deals with the "color problem" — the white man Tracy feels inferior...
...When a woman, in such a problem, asks what to do, she has already made up her mind...
...but Freud interject* that Voltaire isn't being clever, he's only being French...
...Instead of a searching study, in dramatic terms, ef the causes of racial conflict, or of persons tsngled in the quest for a peaceful solution, this play merely shows the antagonisms at work...
...they scramble together a crowded, confused sense of unreality: nothing comes to life...
...Strang...
...nothing is of concern...
...They arc studies (if frustrate individuals, almost case histories, in no way universal or even typical...
...They (race the devious course to disaster of an already broken life...
...Voltaire, tells her to take both...
...The boy that taps with his feet snd with drum-sticks on a chair has been liorrowed from the movie circuit, as Lew Parker dishes over (every Friday), from his radio program to bear the burden of the comedy...
...Stephen Chase does good work in the unsympathetic role of the preacher...
...The answer is "No, I'm again' it...
...the action of the plsy tends to bolster self-justification and to increase hatred on both sides...
...At the Hnynlr Theatre...
...as she looks at Tracy or strokes his hair, shows wistful ness and promise in her first Broadway part...
...Such ingredients do not even make hash of the tale...
...As ths scornful Englishman, secretary-companion to author Alex, Tom Helmore does an excellent job...
...Peter came upon them, drove them back to town — and married Katherine...
...There are a few "good songs, the best two entrusted to Patricia MarJ shall, who shouts so in her dialogue as to take some of the wind out of her singing...
...The color problem, particularly in its aspect of miscegenation, calls for both delicacy and wisdom...
...some eleven of the twelve scenes end hanging over what is supposed to be a pregnant cause...
...Intended —I presume -as college girl "Americana," they range from overalls through wildcat-skin skirts to leopards of curious combinations of brown and lemon and pink and green, giving the general effect of protective coloration in front of a kaleidoscope, or late fall aindl on a leafy road, rather than "The Day Before Spring...
...For producer Ferrer and the hundred odd backers have picked a lamentable play...
...The audience has the greater burden to bear...
...Ten years later, he pul that elopement into a best selling novel...
...0*7-lete by Anton*/ Tudor...
...Sett by Robert Davieon...
...by sharing their problem, the two would reveal it as truly society's problem...
...Then down from their statues, to counsel Kath, step Plato, Voltaire, and Freud, in the evening's one touch of lively humor...
...Persons wander on and off the stage, lounge about with no apparent purpose, drink gallons of Coca-Cols, spread what is supposed to be local color without reference to the plot...
...We felt quite the same, if you get what we mean...
...But her "My Jove ia a married man" begins cleverly...
...The opening song, for instance, urging you to spend "Five more minutes in bed," turns into one of the liveliest dances of the show, starting .fane Peering on her career of seldom interrupted spins...
...Kath reads the book, at the Alumni reunion meets Alex, and all the old charm sweeps over them once more...
...be abandons the drug store his parents have bought for him...
...he accepts his mother's frequently expressed evaluation of him as a failure: only unifer the soothing hands of Negress Nonnie doss he find confidence and feel Vinner power...
...With what they are given, the players strive valiantly...
...Jane White, whose role as Nonnie gives her monologues, and long silences (again...
...The rest of the action has little connection with the story...
...Are we to conclude that only persons obviously distorted overstep the color line...
...Irene Manning as Kath is overshadowed by Bill Johnson as Alex, especially in his singing...
...he should have better chances...
...Freud informs Kath...
...Desperate, Wilbur runs away, and joins a traveling "carnival" thereby saving the insurance company from a schemer's defrauding wiles...
...As when "Bunny" pictures the amours of her 11 SO tours...
...Rather, it is true that these plays do not present the racial problem...
...Nothing backfires more disastrously than clumsy propaganda...
...There is room for, there would be value In, an honest play on the theme of miscegenation...
...Off Kath packs...
...Plato suggests that Kath stay with her husband, as by now their love must lie platonic...
...This is another play in which the men surpass the women...
...It all began, ten years before, at Harrison University...
...he flunks out of college in two months...
...tut F ir» ruled and tin fed by Juir Ferrer...
...sweet home, is saved for good old Harrison...
...Which brings the final reversal, as home...
...A hang-over, no doubt...
...and only the melodrama of the plot...
...what she wants is to make peace with her conscience...
...but in the book the car does not break down, the dream of true love conies true...
...The plav queries "Are You With It...
...Alex became a world-wanderer...
...On the score of the play's theme there are more serious, and equally sweeping, drawbacks...
...This time, the author's secretary-companion takes her through a ballet (or shall 1 say battle...
...For when people begin to misce-genate on the stage, prejudices they do not see in themselves may be exposed...
...mFiun," frua* various points of view, is one of the most inept productions to reach Broadway since George Jean Nathan gave up play writing Jose Ferrer is an erratic but at time* excellent actor...
...though the Esther of the Smith sisters has a minor place in the cast) makes Tracy weakling enough...
...At the National Theatre...
...but the costumes have the distinction of being the most hideous I have recently encountered...
...Although Hermann Leopoldi presents Freud as a burlesque Jewish comedian, he is funny...
...Its result is less to ameliorate than to inflame...
...But there'i a long, cold winter in between...
...The Negro just happens to be handier than the saloon...
...Such a play would present no unique, distorted struggle...
...Melchnr Ferrer (not related to the producer...
...Their car broke down...
...The dances are ineptly fashioned...
...Wilbur Haskins, so the story goes, is the pride of the Nutmeg Insurance Company, and then prize statistician — until he puts a decimal point in the wrong place...
...imsginstlon flags along accustomed ways...
...There is still a deeper defect...
...and "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou, baby" although the idea of the final word was stolen thirteen years ago l»y (he musical "Of Thee I Sing"—carries effectively...
...odd characters of various sorts, without point in the story, as the woman who ests medicine like csndy, or the msn that meanders about with a withered forearm...
...They seem to have worked by pulling scenes haphazard (perhaps they wrote them all on slips of paper and put them in a strsw hat), lectures by a revivalist (who somehow surmises more of Tracy's secret than all those near the man...
...There is s bar tender who turns into a fair tumbler (somersaults, not container...
...But all thirty-four in the cast cannot give life to this effort, "Strange Fruit" fallen green from the bough...
...The ides ia this musical comedy might have made a fantasy as charming and original as "Lady in the Dark...
...Hi* Iago in some oaf it* moment* was the best performance in the Webster-Robeson "Othello...
...Here might be effective drama—and the propaganda power of truth...
...of the season's exhibitions of bad taste and dull aex spun into a poor musical...
...Instead, we have "Strange Fruit" indeed...
...The two white youngsters that talk in favor of better treatment for the Negro I though not so smug as the Northerner in "Deep Are the Roots") merely give warmth of self-satisfaction to those that complacently stroke their own tolerance...
...Baal and lyric* my Alan Jmy Let Me • M it tic by Frederick Loeue...
...Lillian Smith, having written a best-seller, drew in her sister to help dramatize the book...
...It would show two decent, intelligent, controlled persons of different color in love, uniting despite recognition of the difficulties in their way, determined to match their understanding and the strength of their love against the rigid cruelty of a society that is spiritually blind because it is not spiritually colorblind...
...It is not to the credit of the direr-tor that there'd have been a more successful evening if the silence hsd stretched all through...
...Neither is apparent in the stage version of "Strange Fruit...
...Fortunately "Strange Fruit," while clumsy, is too dull to be dangerous...
...Alex and hath, in their senior year, decided to elope...
Vol. 28 • December 1945 • No. 49
