STAGE REVIEW: 1969

A scene from 1969.

 

Back in black

By Ed Rampell

 

One of the great things about the theater is that it can dramatize history, and the people who make it and shake it. Actual events can be given shape and form when expressed in the theatrical medium. Playwright Barbara White Morgan attempts to do this by taking on the heady late sixties, when revolution was in the year, with the Towne Street Theatre world premiere production of 1969.

 

In it, Ajamu (Jaimyon Parker) wears the era’s obligatory uniform of black leather jacket, shades (even indoors and at night) and Afro, which were de rigeur for the period’s black militants. His comrade, Lewis (Lamar Usher) also even dons a beret. Ajamu is the leader of the Afro-centric Blacks United group, which occupies a building that the city government, led by City Councilman Ernest Butler (Kenny Cooper), wants to redevelop and turn into a youth center. This sets the two -- both African American but from different sides of the ideological tracks -- on a collision course.

 

In doing so, this two-acter directed by Kim Harrington poses and dramatizes questions that were very much in the air circa 1969. How will the oppressed advance and attain liberation? By staying within the system or by straying outside of the prevailing established ways of doing things? In Morgan’s play, integration collides with black nationalism, nonviolence with militancy, civil rights with black power, the ballot with the bullet.

 

While Blacks United is a fictional group, it seems like a synthesis of, or suggested by, actual organizations, such as the Philadelphia-based MOVE and the Black Panthers (although they were actually Marxist Leninists, not what Huey Newton and Bobby Seale mocked as “pork chop nationalists”). Indeed, the staged standoff at the Blacks United headquarters calls to mind the similar impasse at MOVE’s HQ, which resulted in the U.S. government’s only domestic aerial firebombing of the 20^th century. In any case, SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) is also alluded to, while Ajamu seems like a composite character composed of Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Huey, etc.

 

The earnest Ernest believes in more incremental change through the electoral process, and seems emblematic of the wave of African-American politicians who attained office in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and the Voting Rights Act, which saw the late sixties elections of Carl Stokes and Richard Hatcher as the black mayors of Cleveland and Gary. 1969 ponders whether these changes at the top will engender true black empowerment -- or the creation of a new African-American establishment. The fact that the drama’s city councilman’s last name is “Butler” -- long a stereotypical and subservient role for blacks -- may indicate where Morgan stands on that issue.

 

Megan Weaver is fetching as Ernest’s wife, Grace Butler; has the city councilman’s wife, with her Afro wigs and fur coat, gone bourgie? Grace’s (presumably) younger, less together sister Edna (Lina Green) is trying to pull herself together. As 1969 was rather famously also when Woodstock took place, no play about that year would be complete without a flower child, and Samantha Clay has some scene stealing fun as the stoned out hippie chick, Joyce, which displays her background with the Groundlings improve troupe. In a double role she also plays Mayor Evans’ (Jonathan Harrison) bourgeois wife Sylvia, who may well be the flip side of her countercultural alter ego. Another Caucasian thesp, Andy Ottenweller, portrays Dave Epstein, radical host of a talk show in, perhaps, the David Susskind mode (although Epstein’s Dave is hipper, younger and to the liberal Susskind’s left), who sympathizes with Ajamu and his cause.

 

All of the elements are here for a combustible concoction set against the background of the sizzling sixties. Alas, this Molotov cocktail never explodes. Although your reviewer was intellectually absorbed by 1969 it rarely became emotionally engaging, even when high stakes were being played. Perhaps this was due to the acting, directing or maybe the writing -- or perhaps all three? For one thing, the staging is a bit repetitious. The play’s credits do not list a set designer per se, and it shows, considering the very standard artwork that decorates the Butlers’ apartment (although it may be meant to cleverly reveal the couple’s being divided between their black sides and the bland middle class values they seem to aspire to). In any case, this is supposed to be live theatre, not a pamphlet or leaflet.

 

Having said that, Morgan’s plot does have some twists and turns which your reviewer did not see coming down the road, which is to the dramatist’s credit. As is the effort to render a play with characters who embody the social struggles of 1969, and a story that dramatizes that era’s almost revolution. (Alas, our side lost and we must soldier on.) Especially as the civil unrest unfolds in Missouri, showing that, beneath the surface, America remains a powder keg ready to blow. 1969 is presented by the Towne Street Theatre, which was created after the 1992 L.A. riots “to create, develop and produce original work that is reflective of the African-American experience and perspective…”

 

Perhaps next stop for TST’s 1969 is Ferguson? The fire next time!

 

 

1969 runs through Nov. 2 at the Stella Adler Theatre, Main Stage, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., 2^nd Floor, Hollywood, California, 90028. For info: (213)712-6944; www.townestreetla.org. For online tickets go to: 1969.

 

AFI 2011: MAMA AFRICA

Nelson Mandela and Miriam Makeba in Mama Africa.

Songs of the free

By Ed Rampell

Mika Kaurismäki's Mama Africa is a documentary about the singer Miriam Makeba, a sort of South African version of Paul Robeson. Like her African-American counterpart, Makeba used her talent, celebrity and personal wealth to support progressive causes -- most notably in favor of Black rights -- and was made to pay quite a heavy price.

After Makeba’s songs appeared on the soundtrack of an anti-apartheid doc around 1960, Makeba was exiled for life from the land of her birth. The Afrikaner racists, however, blundered; beyond their clutches Makeba’s stardom rose overseas and she used her fame as an artist to speak out on the world stage, including at the U.N. during the height of Africa’s independence movement.

Relocating to New York, a political and cultural epicenter, Makeba debuted at the famous Village Vanguard, and was then befriended by Harry Belafonte -- himself a civil rights icon as well as a singing sensation -- who used his own influence to propel Makeba’s career. Along with other left-leaning stars such as Marlon Brando, Makeba was befriended by show biz’s progressive wing. Around the same time Makeba became the songbird darling of the leaders of the newly independent African states, such as Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere.

As the Black liberation movement in the U.S. intensified and moved from nonviolent protest to its more militant phase, Miriam met, and rather amazingly, married the firebrand activist Stokely Carmichael, who had coined the phrase “Black Power.” Kaurismäki rather cleverly cuts a sequence that goes back and forth from a rabblerousing Carmichael speech to Makeba singing a defiant sounding song. In fact, she performs the latter via a form of scatting, making sounds by rhythmically breathing heavily into the microphone while accompanied by her backup band. (Makeba was also known for incorporating words and letters from her Xhosa indigenous tongue -- which Westerners call “clicking” -- into her songs.)

Mama Africa takes us on a fascinating odyssey to Guinea, where Carmichael and Makeba lived in exile -- he, from racist, segregationist America and she from apartheid South Africa – for much of their 10-year marriage. The film presents a fascinating glimpse into their life abroad and takes us to the home they shared in the so-called “Dark Continent.” Unfortunately, their divorce and the coup that ousted the leftist government that had provided the revolutionary couple with sanctuary are only indicated or mentioned in passing.

Kaurismäki uses typical nonfiction techniques, such as original interviews with talking heads (including ex-husband Hugh Masekela, other musical collaborators, relatives), news clips and other archival movie material. But in addition to the uplifting presence of Makeba herself, what really enlivens Mama Africa is the extensive footage of Makeba performing and strutting her stuff, at concerts, on TV, etc. And once Nelson Mandela is freed from prison, Makeba becomes a daughter for the return home, ending her forced exile from her South African homeland. Retracing the epic footsteps of Miriam Makeba, Mama Africa takes us from tragedy to triumph – and what a thrilling ride it is.


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FILM REVIEW: HEY, BOO

To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee.

Once was enough

By Ed Rampell 

One of the biggest, most enduring mysteries in American literature is why didn’t Harper Lee ever write another book after the smash success of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird? Her beloved novel was adapted into a movie only about two years after Lee’s bestseller was published (in contrast, it took Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged half a century-plus to make it to the big screen), and the extremely faithful film version won three Oscars, including for Horton Foote’s screenplay. And who can ever forget Gregory Peck’s sensitive, dignified Academy Award-winning depiction of Atticus Finch, the small town attorney who defends an innocent black man in the 1930s segregated South?  

To Kill a Mockingbird captured the zeitgeist of the early 1960s’ Civil Rights movement, and catapulted the young Lee to fame and fortune. Yet she never wrote again. Why? In her documentary Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill a Mockingbird' writer-director Mary Murphy sets out to find out the answer to that literary enigma and more, with clips from director Robert Mulligan’s 1962 movie, archival footage, original interviews and a trip down to Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama (called Maycomb in the novel).

Alas, as has been her practice since around 1964, Lee -- who is still alive and in her eighties -- remains camera shy. However, a slew of talking heads shed light on the importance and impact of To Kill a Mockingbird, and on Lee herself. The interviewees include Oprah Winfrey, authors such as Scott Turow and Anna Quindlen, Civil Rights leader Andrew Young, musician Roseanne Cash, former newsman Tom Brokaw, etc. However, the most intriguing interviews are with friends of Harper’s and most of all, with her 99-year-old sister Alice Lee.

Although the quirky, ancient Alice -- who still practices law at Monroeville -- is difficult to understand, especially for Yankee ears, she has much to say about her little sister, their small kid days, family life, Harper’s literary process, brush with fame and why she’s never published again. Alice probably comes the closest to revealing the secret of Harper’s perplexing, troubling decision.

In my opinion, this puzzle has much to do with Monroeville’s other fabled novelist, Truman Capote, who also happens to be depicted in To Kill a Mockingbird as Dill John Megna). Capote spent part of his childhood next door to the Lee household. Indeed, while Harper stubbornly refuses to get in front of the camera, she is portrayed by Catherine Keener and Sandra Bullock in two films about Capote’s investigation of the murders he investigated for In Cold Blood, 2005’s Capote and 2006’s Infamous, respectively. Harper assisted Capote with his research in Kansas shortly before To Kill a Mockingbird was published.

Like her childhood friend, Harper relocated to New York, and Truman, who had already attained literary recognition, was helpful in getting To Kill a Mockingbird published. But according to the film, Capote later resented the fact that Harper won a Pulitzer and he didn’t. I suspect that the toll celebrityhood took on Truman and his talent played a major role in turning Harper away from the limelight. However, the experience of being lauded as a literary lioness also affected Harper’s creativity. Whether or not she did try to write another book, the success of To Kill a Mockingbird provided an annuity for her, so unlike the rest of we scribblers, Harper didn’t have to worry about trifles like, you know, earning a living and paying the rent.

Murphy’s documentary doesn’t delve into Harper’s private life. As far as we know she never married, and who knows her sexuality? Truman, of course, was gay, and Lee may have seen how being a celeb under a magnifying glass in a homophobic society adversely affected her childhood pal. Harper might have preferred not to live in a fishbowl and to retreat to the shadows. We have always thought that the tomboy Scout was supposed to be Harper, but perhaps the truth is that she has been more like the reclusive, elusive, eponymous Boo Radley (Robert Duvall’s first movie role).

In any case, this is a heartwarming, entertaining doc for lovers of literature in general, and of To Kill a Mockingbird in particular. Murphy pays the original novel and movie homage by showing how important both were to the Civil Rights movement and puts To Kill a Mockingbird into historical context -- especially as it was written by a young woman who had, once upon a time, grown up in the segregated South. Its tale of racism and injustice, amplified by Peck’s performance as the attorney Atticus who defends the wronged Tom Robinson (the moving Brock Peters), was the quintessential Civil Rights film of its day. In addition, Mary Badham’s badass portrayal of the tomboy Scout stands in stark contrast to the screen’s prim and proper Southern belles. I do declare, Murphy’s doc points out that in addition to striking a blow for equal rights for blacks, To Kill a Mockingbird also made an impact on the issue of gender equality. 

Thank you, Harper Lee.