199.
THE FINAL VERSION
I’m
almost tempted to ignore this play and pretend it never happened; that way no
one’s feelings get hurt and everyone can simply go on with their business. But,
since getting to and from the Nuyorican Poets’ Café, located on E. 3rd
Street between Avenues B and C, on the night of this winter’s first snowstorm,
was such an effort, I feel obligated to say at least a few words about it for
the record, especially since the playwright, Ishmael Reed, and the
director-leading actor, Rome Neal, both have had distinguished careers, Mr.
Reed as a prolific writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and Mr. Neal as both an actor and
director. Unfortunately, this was one of those cases where the extensive
achievements listed in these artists’ program bios seemed totally out of whack
with the astonishing inadequacy of the work currently on view.
THE FINAL VERSION, set largely in 1965, deals with the life
and work of a fictional black writer, Lee Ransom, played by Mr. Neal, and
provides an overview of the place of black writers in American literature from
the 1930s through the mid-1960s; the emphasis is on the activities of black
writers within the world of American communism, and the play is little more
than a barely dramatized series of political diatribes that attempt to explore
the plight of black artists in a society dominated by white capitalists. The ongoing stream of disputation muddied the plot for me to the point that my original report erred in certain plot-related facts, but much of that plot revolves around Lee’s moral dilemma after having chosen financial success by eliminating two communist
characters and modifying a third character in a book he wrote in 1939; in 1965 he is offered the chance to publish the full text of the original work. Apart from that the play is really little more
than a series of political arguments in which characters—including the characters
in the novel—stand and deliver speeches directly to the audience, even when speaking to other characters. Famous names are
dropped, kicked, tossed about, stepped on, and otherwise disposed of in
dialogue and rhetorical addresses that succeed in showing off Mr. Reed’s
considerable erudition about the history of mid-century communism and its place in black American
society, but fail to do more than express lots of provocative anecdotes,
sexual, political, and otherwise, about the famous people mentioned.
For over two hours, in two acts with
an intermission, the audience is barraged with references to Richard Wright,
Carl Van Vechten, James Baldwin, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marxism,
Trotskyism, Leninism, Joe McCarthy, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Thurston, W.E.B.
Du Bois, Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson, Paul Robeson, the Soviet Union, Stalin,
William Styron, and numerous other contemporary names and political topics, all of it wrapped in a production sadly lacking in professional polish.
I can understand that a lack of
funds requires a production using no set other than black curtains, a couple of
small platforms, a formal chair for Lee Ransom to sit in, and a few bar stools.
I don’t mind that June Terry’s costume designs do the best they can on a tiny
budget to suggest the periods shown, even if they aren’t the most authentic or
high quality in execution. I can detect in several of the performers acting
abilities that, under other circumstances, might not appear so wooden and
unconvincing. But I cannot understand how Mr. Neal, with all
his experience, could have forgotten that a play requires shaping, blocking,
pacing, movement, face to face interaction, and the picking up of cues. He
himself constantly seemed to be struggling to remember his lines, and I was hoping that
the flask his character keeps nipping at throughout the play (Lee is referred
to as a drunk) contained nothing stronger than water.
Perhaps a more resourceful
director could have made something of this rambling rehearsal of once
polarizing political positions. The final moments, in which a character called the WASP (Stephen Powell) delivers
a scathingly satirical denunciation of contemporary capitalism, is certainly
viable in this era of the one per centers, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, and OWS.
But if Mr. Reed believes politics on the stage can only be expressed through
rhetorical speeches, and not through the give and take of believable characters
in compelling circumstances, then I certainly hope that this is the final
version of THE FINAL VERSION.
[Incorrect facts about the plot mentioned in the original version of this review were corrected by Mr. Reed, whose corrections have led me to revise accordingly. I offer my apologies for the original mistakes.]
[Incorrect facts about the plot mentioned in the original version of this review were corrected by Mr. Reed, whose corrections have led me to revise accordingly. I offer my apologies for the original mistakes.]