The following precedes each entry,
"In Lieu of Reviews"
Around 40 years ago, I
began a major project that eventuated in the publication of my multivolume
series, The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, each volume
covering a decade. For some reason now lost to the sands of time, I chose to
start with the 1970s. After writing all the entries through 1975 and producing
a typed manuscript of 1,038 pages my publisher (Greenwood) and I decided it
would be best to commence with the 1920s. So the 1970-1975 material was put
aside as I produced volumes for 1920-1930, 1930-1940, and 1940-1950. With those
concluded, Greenwood decided it was all too expensive and not sufficiently
profitable, so the remaining volumes were cancelled, leaving my 1970s entries
in limbo.
To compensate, I used the
research I’d done on the 1970s to write a book for Greenwood called Ten
Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies, which described all aspects of
that era’s theatre, onstage and off. Many years later, in 2012, I began a
postretirement “career” as a theatre reviewer, which led to my creating this
blog as an outlet for my reviews. Over the past eight years or so I’ve posted
nearly 1,600 reviews, a substantial number having first appeared on other
websites: Theater Pizzazz, The Broadway Blog, and Theater Life.
Now, however, with the New
York theatre in suspension, and my reviewing completely halted, is probably the
perfect time to post as many as possible of the entries I prepared for the
never-published 1970-1975 book. The entries that follow are in alphabetical
order. Each entry has a heading listing the subject categories of the work
described: the author (A), the director (D), additional staging (ADD ST), when
credited; the producer (P), the set designer (S), the costume designer (C), the
lighting designer (L), the source (SC), the theatre (T), the dates of the run,
and, in parentheses, the length of the run. The original entries also contained
the names of all the actors but I’ve omitted those here.
I will try to post at
least one entry daily. When time allows, I’ll provide more. The manuscript
exists on fading, fragile paper and, because no digital files exist, must be
retyped. Hopefully, the tragic health situation we’re all enduring will abate
before I get too far into posting these entries but, for the time being,
devoted theatre lovers may find reading these materials informative.
 |
| Clebert Ford, Sati Jamal,Toney Brealond. |
AIN’T
SUPPOSED TO DIE A NATURAL DEATH—TUNES FROM BLACKNESS
[Musical/Revue/Race/Topical] B/M/L: Melvin Van Peebles; D: Gilbert Moses; S:
Kert Lundell; C: Bernard Johnson; L: Martin Aronstein; P: Eugene V. Wolsk,
Charles Blackwell, Emanuel Azenberg, and Robert Malina; T: Ethel Barrymore
Theatre; 10/20/71-7/30/72 (328)
The critics were split down the middle over this
musical exposé of the brutality of existence in a Harlem-like neighborhood,
written and composed by the multi-talented Melvin Van Peebles. Before coming to
New York, the show had been produced at Sacramento State College and was
recorded on an album for which Van Peebles himself did all the voices.
 |
| Madge Wells, Carl Gordon, Barbara Alston. |
A plotless, bookless series of 19 vignettes about the
life and people of the black ghetto, Ain’t
Supposed to Die a Natural Death employed a musical background throughout.
Instead of songs, it had the performers do their numbers in a recitative style,
described by Clive Barnes as “something like blues-shouting, but not much. The
word patters form their own musical outline and are supported by the musical
phrases and pulses.” John Simon, who disliked the show intensely, wrote: “Never
before has tunelessness sound so utterly untuneful. . . . The lyrics are worse.”
The vignettes involved whores, pimps, male and female
homosexuals, cruel cops, jailed murderers, panhandlers, and so on. One scene
showed a blind beggar trying to get a boy to describe a girl whose scent the
man has caught; the girl turns out to be a transvestite. A scene several
critics liked was Garrett Morris’s (best known for “Saturday Night Live”)
enactment of a a convict recalling the sexy dancing of the girl he killed. A
final number, performed by Minnie Gentry, “Put a Curse on You,” put a curse on
all society for having brought poor blacks to so low an estate. This is perhaps
the show’s best-known number.
 |
| Albert Hall. |
Because it was an angry, bitter work, critics like
Simon thought it was a “Get Whitey” show and disparaged it accordingly. Others,
like Harold Clurman, found it crude but exalting in its powerful emotional
expressiveness. There were raves from many, including Martin Gottfried, who
noted that Van Peebles “has taken the color, the accents, the very spirit of
urban black ghetto existence and thrown it upon the stage” in a “magnificent,” “virtually
flawless” presentation that was a “terribly accurate and honest statement.”
The show was vilified, however, by just as many, among
them Julius Novick, who rejected it as “a tired collection of old complaints
and out-of-context melodrama, notably deficient in power, pathos, wit, humor,
imagination, intelligence and charm”
 |
| Marilyn B. Coleman, Jimmy Hayeson. |
Van Peebles received Tony nominations for his book and
score, and a Drama Desk Award for “Most Promising Book Writer.” Other Tony
nominations went to Beatrice Winde for Best Supporting Actress (she won a
Theatre World Award), Gilbert Moses for Best Director, and Martin Aronstein for
Best Lighting Designer. Moses received a Drama Desk Award as Most Promising
Director, and Kurt Lundell won both a Joseph Maharam Foundation Award and a
Drama Desk Award for Scene Design.
Previous Entries:
Abelard and Heloise
Absurd Person Singular
Absurd Person Singular
AC/DC
"Acrobats" and "Line"
The Advertisement
"Acrobats" and "Line"
The Advertisement
Aesop’s Fables
