THE DUPLEX
 |
| Les Roberts, Mary Alice. |
"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like to know the background on how this previously unpublished series came to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.
 |
| Carl Mikal Franklin, Marie Thomas, Norma Donaldson, Les Roberts. |
THE DUPLEX [Comedy-Drama/Alcoholism/Friendship/Gambling/Marriage/Race/Romance/
Sex] A: Ed Bullins; D/M: Gilbert
Moses; S: Kert Lundell; C: Bernard Johnson; L: John Gleason; P: Repertory
Theatre of Lincoln Center; T: Forum Theatre (OB); 3/9/72-4/1/72 (23)
Ed Bullins, the noted militant black
playwright whose works previously had been restricted in their New York
showings to Off-Off Broadway—mainly to Robert Macbeth’s New Lafayette Theatre
in Harlem—consented to a Lincoln Center staging of The Duplex following its Harlem production. However, for reasons
never sufficiently well explained, he protested about what he claimed to be an
exploitative “coon show” production while the show was still in rehearsal, and
sought to have it cancelled.
Although his allegations were refuted
by the black director, Gilbert Moses, and white producer, Jules Irving, the
controversy filled a great deal of newspaper space. At one point, Bullins and a
group of Off-Off playwrights disrupted a performance and harangued the audience
about how the work had been distorted. Irving was forced to end the performance
and send the spectators home.
As it turned out, the critics were not
displeased by The Duplex, and cited
its strengths, both as writing and performance. The play is part of a Bullins
cycle that, when completed, would comprise a score of dramas, many using the
same characters. Chief among them is the central figure, Steve Benson (Les
Roberts), a sensitive college student in his 20s, who is seen here living on
the upper floor of a Southern California duplex apartment owned by an
ex-Tennessee woman, Velma (Mary Alice), and her reckless, promiscuous, sadistic
husband, O.D. (Frank Adu). Steve and Velma are lovers, but largely because he
buffers her from the brutal treatment dished out by her monstrous spouse.
Throughout the loosely plotted,
naturalistic action, the friends and neighbors of these people are introduced.
There is much opportunity for vulgarity, pot smoking, drinking, gambling, and
physical violence. Laughter arises continually, as does emotional empathy for
the suffering endured by these characters.
Bullins divided his play into four “movements,”
for each of which he provided as prologue a choral song with rock music to be
sung by the cast. Jack Kroll suggested that these “jivey interludes” may have
been responsible for Bullins’s anger with the production.
This slice of ghetto life and love met
with moderate resistance. One of the few to disparage it was Douglas Watt, who
called it “tiresomely diffuse,” more suited to novelization than the stage.
Martin Gottfried was annoyed at the playwright’s crude technique and his lack
of control over length, firmness, and structure, but he recognized the work as “art,”
a heightening of “American reality . . . to a mythological level.” However,
John Simon blasted it as “mere commercial theatre, rather slow and faltering in
the first two acts, quite slick in the second two, and brought to a sudden end
without much of a resolution.”
Reviews of the acting and direction
were mainly favorable, especially for Mary Alice, Clarice Taylor as an old
drunk, Les Roberts, and Carl Mikal and Albert Hall as Steve’s card-playing
cronies.
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
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
Don’t
Play Us Cheap!
Drat!
The
Dream on Monkey Mountain
A Dream
Out of Time
Dreyfus
in Rehearsal
Dude: The Highway Life