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| David Downing, Vanessa K. Gilder. |
PLEASE DON’T CRY AND SAY NO [Drama/One-Acts/Race] D: Philip Taylor; S/L: Hal Tine; C: Jon Haggins; P: Sally Sears and Primavera Productions, Ltd.; T: Circle in the Square (OB); 12/6/72-12/17/72 (15)
“The Brown Overcoat” [Romance] A: Victor Sejour; TR:
Townsend Brewster; “The Botany Lesson” [Sex] A: Joaquin Maria Machado de Assis;
TR: Townsend Brewster; “Please Don’t Cry and Say No” [Marriage/Sex] A: Townsend
Brewster
A bill of three one-acts, the first by a Black writer who
wrote in French for the New Orleans theatre of the early-19th century. The second
was by a Brazilian mulatto who wrote in Portuguese. And the third was by a contemporary African-American writer, who also translated the other two plays, both of them lightweight time-passers.
“The Brown Overcoat” is a comedy of manners about a
noblewoman who discards her aristocratic boyfriend when she is attracted to an
interesting pianist. It turns on a dispute over whether an overcoat is brown
or maroon. “The Botany Lesson,” set in 1906, looks at a celibate botanist who
is seduced into having sex by a good-looking female. The author was the founder
of the Brazilian Academy of Literature.
The best was Brewster’s title play, which concerns a young,
middle-class woman who deals with her unhappy marital state by having an affair
with a boy she meets in Central Park. Meanwhile, her husband, a rising executive,
stops short of having his own fling with a girl because he realizes she is jail
bait. “The story ends happily, but by that time it has covered almost every
dramatic cliché in sight,” scoffed Clive Barnes.
