In terms of international stature
and influence, Paul Robeson, who died in 1976, was the most direct antecedent —
politically, philosophically and even in the way he conducted his personal life
— to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Both men linked the tenets of their
Christianity to progressive causes; the politics of both stemmed from the
treatment of blacks in the American South, and how that treatment crashed into
constitutional principles; both were champions of the American labor movement
(King was assassinated while speaking on behalf of garbage workers in Memphis);
both achieved international fame; and both stepped out on their wives.
Maya Angelou
was one of about 50 prominent African-American complainants (also including
James Baldwin, Coretta Scott King and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young) who took out
a two-page ad in Variety in the late 1970s against Paul Robeson, Phillip
Hayes Dean's one-man play (performed with a piano accompanist) about the singer
and crusader. It was being performed at Washington, D.C.'s National Theatre in
1977. before heading to Broadway in 1978. The ad described the play as a
“pernicious perversion of the essence of Paul Robeson.”
Dean was in
L.A, earlier this year directing Keith David in the title role of his most
famous play in a marvelous staging for Ebony Rep at the Nate Holden Performing
Arts Center. (Byron J. Smith accompanies him on piano and joins him in song,
beautifully.) That production closes on April 27. Dean died unexpectedly from
the complications of a heart condition on April 14.
David cuts a
persuasive figure of Robeson, rolling through the character's life, marriage
and international intrigues with some jocularity, so that the mostly
first-person narrative comes sprinkled with self-effacing charm. The play has
the guts to show Robeson condemning the British aristocracy (in whose parlors
Robeson sang) for their alliance with the Nazis when fascism was sweeping
across Europe. (The Brits advised him to keep his mouth shut.) Dean's play
comes peppered with references to Homer and Shakespeare, so that Robeson's life
is filtered through a poetical lens. There are no video backdrops to the bare
stage containing a few padded chairs and a Steinway. It's all in the words, and
the songs.
Dean claimed
he never understood what exactly caused the outrage among black intellectuals
against his play in the '70s. He was at the time defended in an open letter
signed by Edward Albee, Paddy Chayefsky, Lillian Heilman, Betty Comden and
Garson Kanin, among others, and his critics could do little to prevent the play
from being revived on Broadway twice (in 1988 and 1995), by which time the
protests against it had dissipated.
Perhaps it
was the candor with which the play portrayed Robeson's dissembling and
reversals before the House Un-American Activities Committee when refusing to
condemn what was becoming an increasingly tyrannical Soviet Union. By 1995, the
Soviet Union was history, as was the Red Scare on these shores.
Will anyone
join me in taking out a two-page ad in Variety condemning the “pernicious
perversion of the essence of Paul Robeson” in writer-performer's Daniel Beaty's
new play The Tallest Tree in the Forest, a one-man show starring Beaty
as Paul Robeson, directed by Moises Kaufman to accent the obvious, also with
songs and musical accompaniment? My ad would be entirely on artistic grounds.
Beaty's play
covers much the same terrain as Dean’s, but with considerably less poeticism,
nuance and insight. It skips the part about the British aristocrats being
pro-Hitler, stemming from their mutual contempt for Communism. It's a child's-
eye view of Robeson's world, in which Beaty portrays the giant man as well as
all the characters he interacts with. When, returning to Robeson, he bellows
out one of the play-closing lines, “My voice will be heard!” I couldn't help
but think how much more dignified the closing to Dean's play is, with Robeson
at age 75 quietly thanking the people who had been part of his life. Beaty's
play emphasizes Robeson's infidelity to his wife, making that an issue via
repeated references to it; Dean's play raises the subject once, then dismisses
it as a non-issue. When referring to people with the capacity to change the
world for the better, I'll take the latter approach.
Beaty is a
fine actor and has a great voice, though nothing that resembles Robeson's.
David, as the other Robeson, has the weaker singing instrument of the two, but
he's closer in soulfulness and voice to Robeson.
Beaty's play
is a world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum, presented simultaneously by
Center Theatre Group, La Jolla Playhouse, Kansas City Repertory Theatre and
Tectonic Theater Project. How many institutional theaters does it take to fuck
up a play, and the memory of the great man it purports to represent?
One example
sums up the difference in the quality of the storytelling. Both plays depict a
scene where Robeson meets with Harry Truman regarding the lynchings of black
soldiers in the South, upon their return from World War II. Beaty's play uses
the shortcut that Truman dismissed the appeal. Dean's play artfully sets up the
confrontation with a description of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's funeral, and
all the dreams of the left that were being buried with him. There was a little
man from Missouri walking in the procession, Harry Truman. In Dean's play,
Truman orders a committee review of the allegations, and then, finally, does
nothing with the results.
The
difference may seem minor at first glance, but after more than two hours in the
theater, such differences in tone and detail accrue.
PAUL ROBESON | Written and
directed by Phillip Hayes Dean | Ebony Repertory Theatre at the Nate Holden
Performing Arts Center, 4718 Washington Blvd., Los Angeles | ebonyrep.org
THE TALLEST TREE IN THE FOREST | Written by
Daniel Beaty | Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. |
centertheatregroup.org
LA Weekly, April 25, 2014
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