DON’T PLAY US CHEAP!
 |
| Rhetta Hughes, Esther Rolle. |
"In Lieu of Reviews"
Reviews of live theatre being impossible during these days of the pandemic, THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE
is pleased to provide instead accounts of previous theatre
seasons--encompassing the years 1970-1975-for theatre-hungry readers. If you'd
like to know the background on how this previously unpublished series came to
be and what its relationship is 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 entries
beginning with the letter “A.” See the list at the end of the current entry.
 |
| Joe Keyes, Jr., Avon Long, Thomas Anderson. |
DON’T PLAY US CHEAP! [Musical/Fantasy/Race] B/M/LY/D/P: Melvin Van Peebles; S: Kert Lundell; C:
Bernard Johnson; L: Martin Aronstein; T: Ethel Barrymore Theatre;
5/16/72-10/1/72 (164)
Multiple-threat talent Melvin Van
Peebles, who already had a show, Ain’t
Supposed to Die a Natural Death, running on Broadway, entered a new one
into sweepstakes with Don’t Play Us
Cheap!, for which he not only did all the writing and composing, but also
produced and directed. Unhappily, the results sat poorly with the reviewers
who, like Martin Gottfried, found the show “nowhere near as good” as the
earlier one.
 |
| Mabel King. |
Don’t Play Us Cheap! had an upbeat, brighter outlook than its predecessor, but its “dumb book”
(Gottfried) and clumsy, amateurish direction killed whatever appeal its decent
rhythm and blues score might have had. Also, too many characters were
pasteboard stereotypes of the sort to which even black people normally object.
At a boisterous Saturday night Harlem
birthday party, a rat (Joe Keyes, Jr.) and a cockroach (Avon Long), imps in the
devil’s service, arrive in human guise to break it up. They soon find
themselves having fun, and decide to remain a humans. One even gets a
girlfriend. But the other is squashed to death in his insect form.
 |
| Esther Rolle, Robert Dunn, Joshie Jo Armstead. |
Almost all the partygoers were given a
solo, but the songs were hard to make out because of diction and amplification
problems. The good voices were in most cases not matched by equally acceptable
acting.
Few critics repudiated the show
outright, most taking a middle ground, but Richard Watt’s seemed to like it
quite a bit, while Clive Barnes thought it had “fizz, guts and honesty” and was
“a sprawling, rumbustious, greathearted show.” John Simon’s view was directly
opposed, even calling Van Peebles “a man . . . of virtually no talent whatever.”
Still, Van Peebles’s book was given a
Tony nomination, and Avon Long was nominated for Best Featured Actor, Musical. The
company also included such distinguished names as Rhetta Hughes, Mabel King,
and Esther Rolle.
Previous entries:
Abelard and Helo/ise
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
The Black Terror
Black Visions
Les Blancs
Blasts and Bravos: An Evening with H,L.
Mencken
Blood
Bluebeard
Blue Boys
Bob and Ray—The Two and Only
Boesman and Lena
The Boy Who Came to Leave
Bread
A Breeze from the Gulf
Brief Lives
Brother Gorski
Brothers
Bullshot Crummond
Bunraku
The Burnt Flower Bed
Butley
Button, Button
Buy Bonds, Buster
The Cage
Camille
Candide (1)
Candide (2)
The Candyapple
Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
The Caretaker
La Carpa de los Raquichis
The Carpenters
The Castro Complex
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Changing Room
Charles Abbott and Son
Charley’s Aunt
Charlie Was Here and Now He’s Gone
Chemin de Fer
The Cherry Orchard
The Chickencoop Chinaman
The Children
Children! Children!
Children in the Rain
Children of the Wind
The Children’s Mass
A Chorus Line
The Chronicle of Henry VI: Part 1, Part
II,
The Circle
Clarence Darrow
Cold Feet
Conditions of Agreement
Coney Island Cycle
The Constant Wife
The Contractor
The Contrast
The Constant Wife
The Country Girl
Crazy Now
The Creation of the
World and Other Business
Creeps
The Crucible
Crystal and Fox
Cyrano
Dames at Sea
The Dance of Death
Dance wi’Me/Dance with
Me
A Day in the Life of
Just about Everyone
Dear Nobody
Dear Oscar
The
Desert Song
Diamond
Studs
Different
Times
The Dirtiest
Show in Town
The
Divorce of Judy and Jane
Do It
Again!
Doctor Jazz
A Doll’s
House (2)
Don Juan
Don
Juan in Hell
Don’t
Bother Me, I Can’t Cope
Don’t
Call Back