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| Preston Bradley, Paul Benjamin, Don Blakely Dolores Vanison, Freda Vanterpool, Kirk Young. |
"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unpublished series—introducing all mainstream New York shows between 1970 and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.
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| Kain, Paul Benjamin, Susan Batson. |
The time is in the “near future.” Black revolutionaries are
operating in terrorist guerilla groups, killing off their white oppressors.
Kensi (Kain), a black Vietnam vet with a crossbow, assassinates a police
commissioner. He hesitates, however, at fulfilling his next assignment, the
slaying of a moderate black leader whose aims conflict with those of the terrorists.
His refusal precipitates the argument of this polemical drama—is violence the
most valid way for the oppressed to rectify their grievances?
Kensi’s girlfriend M’Bahlia (Susan Batson) is fire-breathing
radical who is among those strongl in favor of the bloodshed. Kensi’s other
chief opponent is a rabid revolutionary named Geronimo (Don Blakely). In the
end, the girl herself carries out the killing of the black leader, a man who,
it is learned, is actually her own father. He breaks loose and the white
establishment begins the systematic destruction of American blacks.
Richard Wesley’s provocative melodrama intrigued many critics
but was shelled by a small minority. Most of the positive reviews were glad to
see how objectively the author had treated his material. Clive Barnes
complimented the “strong and forceful” writing and character depiction. Dick
Brukenfeld suggested that dramatizing these issues “might, in fact, be saving
lives.” And Henry Hewes felt that the work emerged “as a remarkably genuine and
deeply frightening statement.”
Those responding with multiple reservations included Douglas
Watt (“a wordy and contrived first play as melodramatic as its title might
suggest”) and Martin Gottfried, who declared that it would never have been
produced if it had been written by a white man. He added that it was “typical
of too much black theatre: Naturalistic, melodramatic and built on a framework
of ideological argument rather than characterization, plotting or dramatic
tension.” Repelled by the “amateurish” proceedings, John Simon called The Black Terror “a boringly
predictable, dry-as-dust in spite of its blood-and-thunder rhetoric, political
tract.”
Gottfried and Simon denigrated the acting and direction but the
remaining critics were considerably kinder to the mounting, especially to Susan
Batson and the one-name actor Kain. The latter, in fact, won a Drama Desk Award
for Outstanding Performance.
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
Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellens
Be Kind to People Week
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill
Bette Midler’s Clams on a Half-Shell
Revue
Black Girl
Black Light Theatre of Prague
Black Picture Show
Black Sunlight
