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Wooster Group's "Emperor Jones' (2nd review)
Belaboring the obvious
LEWIS WHITINGTON
When The Emperor Jones was first produced in 1920, Eugene O’Neill presented a singular contrasting image of a black man on the racist American stage. Brutus Jones wasn’t a slave or domestic, but a fugitive from an American chain-gang who becomes the self-proclaimed leader on a Caribbean Island. But, this provocative construct, like Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, is hard to divorce from its racist time, nor could O’Neill be excused then from the play’s racist moorings.
By now, the play is an artifact, like lawn jockeys and mammy cookie jars. The language, passed as “authentic” by O’Neill (who traveled the country, South America and the Caribbean) plays to stereotypes relentlessly. Its violent scenarios are lugged around like so much racial baggage. Is The Emperor Jones an intellectual minstrel show?
The prestigious Wooster Group answers that question in powerful moments that bring its brazen production together. When Jones is hunted down, he says to this mostly white audience, “Is this an auction?”, and the power of O’Neill’s view of America comes together. But, for me, such potent moments were too few to justify this staging. The 1920 production was the first time an important black role was not played by a white man in blackface. Wooster paints Brutus Jones in blackface.
Brave or offensive? Like Spike Lee’s blistering ’90s racial satire Bamboozled, Wooster belabors the point that we are still a racist society. The inarguable point runs out of steam quickly in Lee’s film, and it does so here, too. It becomes the production’s only purpose. Even the image of a corrupted black dictator on an island is just another dimensionless stereotype. Director Elizabeth LeCompte keeps hammering away at a fevered pitch, rendering this production an assaultive performance piece, but the mostly one-dimensional approach and hackneyed ironies do little to illuminate the character past O’Neill’s hothouse scenario.
But nothing detracts from the commitment of the actors, especially Kate Valk’s vainglorious reading of Jones, reprising her role from Wooster’s celebrated production in the late ’90s. But as impressive as her hour-long monologue is, she would have exuded more power had she dialed it back a notch from her volume-10 “G’wan ‘n git” intonations.
LeCompte’s direction mercifully streamlines the text with crisp staging and brilliant and potent visuals. The mumbling white scoundrel Mr. Smithers is scaldingly played by Ari Fliakos (alternating with Scott Shepherd). Jim Clayburgh’s set has a seditious allure of a tropical palace out of a Graham Greene novel.
At best, this Emperor Jones skewers dated concepts of the play, giving a blistering view of the lingering onus of vile black stereotypes. Otherwise, it relies on these images— a double standard that, in itself, produces very mixed theatrical results.
To read a review by Lesley Valdes, click here.
LEWIS WHITINGTON
When The Emperor Jones was first produced in 1920, Eugene O’Neill presented a singular contrasting image of a black man on the racist American stage. Brutus Jones wasn’t a slave or domestic, but a fugitive from an American chain-gang who becomes the self-proclaimed leader on a Caribbean Island. But, this provocative construct, like Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, is hard to divorce from its racist time, nor could O’Neill be excused then from the play’s racist moorings.
By now, the play is an artifact, like lawn jockeys and mammy cookie jars. The language, passed as “authentic” by O’Neill (who traveled the country, South America and the Caribbean) plays to stereotypes relentlessly. Its violent scenarios are lugged around like so much racial baggage. Is The Emperor Jones an intellectual minstrel show?
The prestigious Wooster Group answers that question in powerful moments that bring its brazen production together. When Jones is hunted down, he says to this mostly white audience, “Is this an auction?”, and the power of O’Neill’s view of America comes together. But, for me, such potent moments were too few to justify this staging. The 1920 production was the first time an important black role was not played by a white man in blackface. Wooster paints Brutus Jones in blackface.
Brave or offensive? Like Spike Lee’s blistering ’90s racial satire Bamboozled, Wooster belabors the point that we are still a racist society. The inarguable point runs out of steam quickly in Lee’s film, and it does so here, too. It becomes the production’s only purpose. Even the image of a corrupted black dictator on an island is just another dimensionless stereotype. Director Elizabeth LeCompte keeps hammering away at a fevered pitch, rendering this production an assaultive performance piece, but the mostly one-dimensional approach and hackneyed ironies do little to illuminate the character past O’Neill’s hothouse scenario.
But nothing detracts from the commitment of the actors, especially Kate Valk’s vainglorious reading of Jones, reprising her role from Wooster’s celebrated production in the late ’90s. But as impressive as her hour-long monologue is, she would have exuded more power had she dialed it back a notch from her volume-10 “G’wan ‘n git” intonations.
LeCompte’s direction mercifully streamlines the text with crisp staging and brilliant and potent visuals. The mumbling white scoundrel Mr. Smithers is scaldingly played by Ari Fliakos (alternating with Scott Shepherd). Jim Clayburgh’s set has a seditious allure of a tropical palace out of a Graham Greene novel.
At best, this Emperor Jones skewers dated concepts of the play, giving a blistering view of the lingering onus of vile black stereotypes. Otherwise, it relies on these images— a double standard that, in itself, produces very mixed theatrical results.
To read a review by Lesley Valdes, click here.
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