Monday, October 26, 2020

362. NOWHERE TO RUN, NOWHERE TO HIDE. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Joyce Hanley, Todd Davis.
NOWHERE TO RUN, NOWHERE TO HIDE [Drama/Crime/Drugs/Race] A: Herman Johnson; D: Dean Ireby; C: La Donna Harris; L: Sandra Ross; P: Negro Ensemble Company; T: St. Marks Playhouse (OB); 3/26-74-3/31/74 (8)

Produced as the second of four pays in the Negro Ensemble Company’s special “Season-Within-a-Season” series of one-week runs, Herman Johnson’s play offered a “rewarding, although unfulfilled” evening of theatre,” said Clive Barnes. Overlong and with a plot insufficiently developed, it nevertheless had many powerful elements.

Circling around the plight of Willie Stewart (Todd Davis), an 18-year-old Harlem student, are a number of excellently etched characters and scenes. The episodic plot concerns a pair of Black cops (Leon Morenzie and Frankie Faison) who deal drugs to the kids at a Harlem high school. They murder their school connection (Roland Sanchez) and then attempt to pin the rap on Willie, a troubled, rebellious kid with a pregnant girlfriend and a mother who runs with a young hoodlum.

Atmosphere, dialogue, characters, acting, directing, and dramatic tension were all present, inviting Edith Oliver to find it “always convincing." Among the better-known cast members were Samm(-Art) Williams.Robert Christian, and Michele Shay.