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| Frances Foster, Graham Brown (seated), Carl Byrd, Roxie Roker, Robert Christian. |
"In Lieu of Reviews"
For background on how this previously
unpublished series—introducing all mainstream New York shows between 1970 and
1975—came to be and its relationship to my three The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage volumes (covering every New
York play, musical, revue, and revival between 1920 and 1950), please check the
prefaces to any of the earlier entries beginning with the letter “A.” See the
list at the end of the current entry.
BEHOLD! COMETH THE
VANDERKELLENS [Drama/Family/Homosexuality/Marriage/ Mental Illness/Race/Southern/University] D:
William Wellington Mackay; D: Edmund Cambridge; S: George Corrin; C: Audrey Smaltz; L: Roger Morgan; P: Woodie
King Associates i/a/w Russell Price and Ida Epps b/s/a/w Lucille Lortel
Productions; T: Theatre de Lys (OB): 3/31/71-4/18/71 (23)
It’s 1960 and a campus riot swells around the home of Dr.
Vanderkellen (Graham Brown), president of a black college in a Southern state.
The students want the moderate administrator out of office. At home with the
president are his wife (Frances Foster), who has mental problems; his
homosexual son (Robert Christian); an intellectual son (Carl Byrd); and a sophisticated
daughter (Roxie Roker). Missing is a daughter whose marriage to a white man has
helped unsettle the mother’s mind. Torn by guilt because of their success in the
world of white, middle-class values, the family squabbles ferociously, in a
manner suggestive of O’Neill’s Long Day’s
Journey into Night.
Richard Watts alone praised the play for its “striking” and
unsentimentally depicted characters, and for the “considerable power” of its
writing. More common were remarks like Mel Gussow’s that this was “a
subprofessional mish-mash” in which the actors struggled with “characterless
parts in an unplayable play.” To James Davis, “Everything seemed to be in slow
motion, meaning the writing, the acting and the direction.”
Previous entries:
Abelard and
Heloise
Absurd Person
Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats”
and “Line”
The Advertisement/
All My Sons
All Over
All Over Town
All the Girls Came
Out to Play
Alpha Beta
L’Amante Anglais
Ambassador
American Gothics
Amphitryon
And Miss Reardon
Drinks a Little
And They Put
Handcuffs on the Flowers
And Whose Little
Boy Are You?
Anna K.
Anne of Green
Gables
Antigone
Antiques
Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead
Applause
Ari
As You Like It
Augusta
The
Au Pair Man
Baba Goya [Nourish the Beast]
The Ballad of Johnny Pot
Barbary Shore
The Bar that Never Closes
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
The Beauty Part
The Beggar’s Opera
