TERRACES [Comedy-Drama/Crime/Family/Marriage/Race/Romance] A: Steve Carter; D: Frances Foster; C: La Donna Harris; L: Sandra Ross; P: Negro Ensemble Company; T: St. Marks Playhouse (OB); 4/2/74-4/7/74 (8)
Note: no photos of this production are available.
Produced the NEC’s “Season-Within-a-Season”
series of one-week runs, Terraces was
a collection of four scenes set in a “pseudo-posh multi-terraced housing complex in the middle of Harlem, U.S. of A." The
setting is the only link between the parts. The actors each played at least two
roles. The first three scenes are comic, the last a suspenseful melodrama, with
all the characters, for whom the playwright has little but scorn, being Black and well-to-do.
In one scene, a young
couple (Joyce Hanley and Rolan-lqad Sanchez) break off their engagement while
examining an apartment; in another the audience witnesses the aftermath of a
situation in which a husband (Robert Christian) finds his wife in bed with
someone else when he comes home with friends for a surprise party; a third
deals with an older couple (Mary Alice and Leon Morenzie) discussing the
ingratitude of their now grown children; and the last is what Edith Oliver
termed a “startling and hair-raising” episode about a wealthy family who ritually
murder a derelict (Morenzie), at a birthday party, for being a disgrace to his
race.
“Mr. Carter writes
with a sharp pen and these dramatic anecdotes maintain the interest,” approved
Clive Barnes. Oliver thought “the performances went very well indeed.”
Next up: That Championship Season.
