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| Marjorie Barnes, Bill Cobbs, J.A. Preston, Estelle Evans, Dotts Johnson. |
One of the few plays of the 70s
that examined the problems of middle-class, as opposed to ghetto-dwelling,
black Americans, this was a fairly successful endeavor both as writing and
production. Its concerns were more universal than many other racially tinged
plays, while never losing its pertinence as a reflection of black society.
Freeman Aquila (Bill Cobbs) is a desperately
frustrated married man. The son of a Michigan foundry worker and a nurse,
he’s made several unsuccessful attempts at finding a place in life, but has
ended up living with his pregnant wife at his parents’ home. His best friend,
Rex (J.A. Preston), raised by Freeman’s parents, has become a prosperous
doctor.
Freeman wants to have his share of the benefits of middle-class culture, but is incapable of following conventional educational or social routes to success. A fiery idealist, despite his lack of qualifications, he runs for political office, but loses. Stubborn to the end, he keeps failing at his goals, finally being forced to take a janitor’s job. The ferment within him explodes, however, and he sets fire to the community center that employs him.
Freeman wants to have his share of the benefits of middle-class culture, but is incapable of following conventional educational or social routes to success. A fiery idealist, despite his lack of qualifications, he runs for political office, but loses. Stubborn to the end, he keeps failing at his goals, finally being forced to take a janitor’s job. The ferment within him explodes, however, and he sets fire to the community center that employs him.
The play’s three-dimensional
depiction of Freeman and its ability to make the character both sympathetic and
irritating, as a man who suffers from social neglect and personal frailty, led
the critics to view the work as a significant treatment of a meaningful
dilemma. There were weaknesses in the writing, summed up by Clive Barnes, who
wrote: “The play . . . starts slowly and ends a trifle lamely.” Or by Harold
Clurman, who observed: “The play . . . is somewhat unclear in its factual exposition,”
to which John Simon added that the first act didn’t work, the people were “obvious,”
and the dialogue “scarcely endurable.”
But the strengths were so
forthright that attention rarely lapsed and the final effect was of a moving,
nearly tragic situation, outlined with telling honesty and truth. Simon’s
passivity toward the first act was totally ravaged by a second act in which one
scene between Rex and Freeman was so “perfectly conceived and impeccably
executed” that it was “bewilderingly good . . . [and] way beyond anything
Jones-Baraka, Bullins or any other black American—and almost any white American
dramatist today could manage.”
The staging and performances were
thoroughly effective, with what Simon dubbed the “overpowering” acting of Bill
Cobbs’s Freeman being predominant. Cobbs won that season’s Drama Desk Award as
the Most Promising Performer (which also recognized his work in What the Wine Sellers Buy).
