On Stage

...On Stage THEATER'S THIRD CHOICE BY HARRIS GREEN Does anyone doubt the kind of reception that would greet a play or a pageant that glorified white racism and urged genocide as a solution to our racial dilemma...

...As written and directed by Joseph A Walker, this revulsive pageant of tribal chants and jive asserts black superiority with a consistent shrillness that Hitler might have envied Walker's admiration of his race is so rabid ("We are harmony") that, in the opening section devoted to Mother Africa, he never acknowledges a single unharmonious fact of African life--like tribal warfare When he shows us a Typical African Village enslaved by whites, the simple villagers are chained while they sleep by the slave traders they had made welcome as guests (talk about your sound sleepers')--not sold into slavery by their chief or by their black brothers from another tribe, as happened far more often By the time Ododo reaches Harlem, allowing the anything but beautiful cast to shed their anything but authentic tribal garb for more flattering costumes...

...White Paternalism (the blind old widow of an Albert Schweitzer type), and Corrupted Negritude (a black who has become a Catholic priest) Their rhetoric was tinny ("Where were you when we protested without violence9") and their dialogue empty ("Tell me, Tshembe, why are you so hostile...

...The message, garbled after all the rewriting, is that it may be necessary for black Americans to slaughter whites, as the Mau Mau did Or that it may be futile Or that it may be both--which is impossible So is the cast, some of whom appear to be in a state verging upon shell shock James Earl Jones, unforgettable m The Great White Hope, delivers his admittedly unlikely lines with nothing but resonance, cuteness and mushy diction The 12 members of the Negro Ensemble Company who sing, dance and threaten in Ododo appear in high spirits--and why not...

...I can think of several unflattering explanations for this double collapse of critical standards, but I will settle for one that applies only to plays like these Some reviewers obviously have the patronizing notion that anything involving or created by blacks need not fulfill rigorous esthetic requirements Besides insulting gifted Negro artists, this muddleheaded notion confuses artistic discrimination with racial discrimination and insists that both be abandoned No doubt affection for the late Miss Hansberry, who died five years ago at the age of 34, also had something to do with the reviewers' astonishingly gentle reaction to Les Blancs Her 1959 Raisin in the Sun was a sociological milestone, the first play by a black about blacks with a black director to be done on Broadway, as drama, it was little more than liberal soap opera, but at least it was within her reach Les Blancs, an epic about a native revolt in a British colony m Africa having implications for the Negro's struggle in America today, was probably beyond her We'll never be certain, though, for as it now lies, prone, upon the boards of the Longacre, it is not her unfinished work but a Frankenstein's monster of transplants, stitched together by her ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, his "literary associate" Charlotte Zaltzberg, and God knows who else The outdated Playbill distributed by the frugal management testified to the chaotic surgery of these play-doctors, who twice postponed the official opening through an ever lengthening run of "previews" It listed a director who had been fired, three characters who had been cut and an eagerly awaited intermission that, for obvious reasons, was never granted I was all set to flee, for there were no human beings on stage, black or white, to hold my attention--only hollow symbols banging about, representing Colonialism (a British officer who sleeps with native women...

...Our wittier reviewers would point out that those who preach white supremacy are themselves a living refutation of the doctrine, while the more tender-minded would sigh about how dreadful it is to glorify prejudice, violence and hatred at a time like this The show would fold within a week, leaving nothing to mark its passing but outraged letters in the Drama Mailbag of Sunday's New York Times How, then, can one account for the fact that almost all reviewers murmured respectfully about Les Blancs, begun but never finished by the late Lorraine Hansberry, despite its implying that a Mau Mau-style bloodbath may be needed for black Americans to get their rights9 And why did most of them do no more than cluck politely to show their disapproval of Ododo, the first production of the newly reorganized Negro Ensemble Company, which whoopingly asserts its delight in only-black-is-beautiful racism, anti-intellectualism and genocide of the "get whitey"' variety...

...Walker has outdone any street-corner demagogue in asserting his credentials as a manly revolutionary Given his academic background, he can perhaps be forgiven some of this fiery display, diplomas are not considered "viable credentials" at a time like this, you understand It is a bit more difficult to pardon a company that once tried to select decent plays but now prances about, singing the praise of obscurantism ("They don't care about Oedipus Rex, / They care about Malcolm X'"), threatening the Republic from the sanctity of St Marks Place ("Sing a song of laughter, / Uncle told a he, / And because he told it, / Uncle's got to die"), and urging merry defiance ("March to Washington Take turns wiping your ass on the Constitution'") The Negro Ensemble Company has successfully removed any taint of "Uncle Tomism" by sanctioning this historical and philosophical mess, it has simultaneously destroyed its artistic credentials in the carefully banked fires of what it thinks to be "revolution Walker's calling the sorry affair "Ododo" the Yoruba word for truth, merely strengthens my distrust Truly, he doth protest too much, it I may be permitted another paraphrase of that noted honkie, Shakespeare Fortunately, we need not make the logical error of those who urge revolution as the only alternative There is always a third choice, in theater as well as politics, so I urge you to spurn both the white-liberal masochism of the playdoctors of Les Blancs and the febrile black chauvinism of the part-time witchdoctors in Ododo to sample the solid theatrical values the English have exported To begin with, we have a revival of Noel Coward's Hay Fever, a tasty souffle whipped up by a master chef that may retain its flavor for years to come, since pretense and sentimentality are not among its ingredients I should warn, though, that it could do with a more savory production than Leonard Sillman has served up Underdone direction and juiceless casting have given it the flat look of a tax loss I can say little about Sleuth, the hit by Anthony Shaffer--not because there is so little to say but because everyone has been urged to reveal the absolute minimum about it Even a resume of its twisty plot would mislead you, so cleverly has Shaffer constructed his mirrored labyrinth of incident Still, I trust I am revealing no classified information when I note that Anthony Quayle and Keith Baxter, who head the cast, show once again the immense benefits an actor derives from working in the English theater This gives him a thorough schooling in the classics, extending his range, and the stimulating competition of superb colleagues Two of these colleagues, Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson, are also in town in David Storey's Home, a play of considerably more solid intent than Sleuth Its setting is an asylum, a sort of rest home for all classes that obviously serves as a metaphor for England today, and the style is sort of a bolder version of Pinter's overlapping dialogue, fragmented recall and twilight murkiness On a bare terrace beside a flagless flagpole, Gielgud and Richardson haltingly reminisce about genteel pursuits and past glories ("This little island--" "Shan't see its like--the sun has set"), while Dandy Nichols and Mona Washbourne--a lusty pair--lament such present annoyances as ill-fitting shoes (a thrust at Socialist plenty) And that, regrettably, is about all they do I neither challenge Storey's gloom nor deny the wit and pathos occasionally created, but I do believe that plays like Home are another of the ailments of dreary olde England These impress me as less a dramatic breakthrough than a dramatic breakdown English critics who hail this kind of sketchy writing and minidrama seem as desperate to retain the national claim to dramatic glory as Colonel Blimp was to maintain the Empire And I sensed in Gielgud and Richardson a similar strain, as if by elaborating on this pause or distending that phrase ("intended to show the toy-dies") they could restore some of the familiar grandeur to their stage Another highly acclaimed import, the one-man show MacGowran in the Works of Samuel Beckett, proved only sporadically rewarding, despite what you might have read by the same critics who played down the horrors of Les Blancs and Ododo (Praising anything by Beckett or blacks is a middlebrow reviewer's first guarantee of "relevance" these days) The Irish actor, Jack MacGowran, looked marvelous shuffling about in a tattered greatcoat and oversize shoes, but his acting lacked fire and his selections were spotty Beckett, that master distiller of modern man's obsession with things and time ("and every four years, the February debacle"), deserves far better than MacGowran...