136.
IN THE WINE TIME
Ed Bullins was once one of the leading
black playwrights in America, a writer who came into his own during the days of
the black power movement of the 1960s. He wrote a number of provocative
plays, among them IN THE WINE TIME. This apparently semiautobiographical 1968 drama, set
in a slum neighborhood of a large northeastern industrial city (Bullins is from
Philadelphia), takes place on a hot summer night in 1952 when the mainly black
residents of Derby Street are hanging outside on stoops and sidewalks,
seeking respite from the sweltering heat. It has some stylized elements but is
essentially a slice of life drama, spilling over with profanity (and the
N-word), sexuality, anger, drinking, jealousy, and marital angst, but, while Bullins had
served briefly as Minister of Culture for the Black Panthers, it’s not
especially political or racially divisive. The offstage voices of two members
of the white Krump family have been cut, and the only whites seen are the
drunken Mr. Krump (Richard Brundage) in a brief, wordless appearance, and the
local beat cop (Mr. Brundage again).
Something
of a coming of age drama, IN THE WINE TIME centers on the relationship of the
rage-filled, womanizing, unemployed Cliff (Kim Sullivan); his long-suffering
wife, Lou (Shirlene Victoria Quigley), whom he abuses; and their teenage nephew,
Ray (Khadim Diop), whom Cliff and Lou look after. Ray’s late mother was Lou’s sister. Cliff,
a former troublemaking sailor who spent much of his service time in the brig,
is loud and crude; he finds in young Ray someone he tries to mold into the man
he himself would like to be. But, despite being described as someone going to
school to improve his lot, Cliff comes off as a lout who’d like to see Ray get into
the navy so he can enjoy the sexual favors of women all over the world. Lou
clashes constantly with Cliff over how to handle Ray, while Ray, especially as
played by Mr. Diop, is a neutral, pliable figure, playing with his yo yo and
downing glass after glass of wine with his aunt and uncle. The play’s title is
intended to have poetic resonances as a time of day when people can relax and
release their inhibitions, but in this production seems simply an excuse for
people to get drunk, holler, or exercise their libidos.
There are a
number of supporting characters, most with little more than fornication and
cheap wine on their minds; those supposed to be teenagers look like
they’re in their mid to late 20s and act like they’ve been around the sexual block more
times than they can count. The character of Silly Willy Clark, described in the
script as a large man in his thirties, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, is played by
Harrison Lee as a skinny, grizzled wino in a porkpie hat on the verge of the
DTs, which makes little sense in the context. In an effort perhaps intended to suggest how the wine brings out the characters' animal natures, director Mansoor Najee-ullah has Cliff and Lou roar at each like wild beasts; later, others do so at well. It's a choice the show could well do without. At the end, simmering tensions (in
this production, more in the text than on the stage) erupt in an act of
violence whose melodramatic outcome is meant somehow to redeem Cliff, but the
last 15 minutes or so of the play have been so clumsily staged
and acted that it’s impossible to accept anything on view as credible. There
are good actors in this production but they’ve all been left out to dry.
Neither the direction, set,
lighting, costumes, nor incidental music (including an overextended gospel
version of “America the Beautiful” that precedes the performance) do anything
to help lift this revival above the commonplace. Even the venue, in the
basement of the Castillo Theatre, conspires against the show, with the
auditorium lacking any rake whatsoever; I had to bob and weave to see the show
around the ears of the head in front of me. Whatever values Mr. Bullins’s play
may still have, 45 years after it premiered, are bungled by this ham-fisted and
unattractive production.