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CRITIC'S PICK- San Diego Union Tribune
Lynx pounces on the demanding drama of 'Dutchman'
Michael L. Greenwald, November 24, 2006
It hangs ominously, a red cord against black curtains in the dim light of
the Lynx Performance space. The loop at the end suggests a noose,
portending a violent climax to an angry play by Amiri Baraka (nee LeRoi
Jones), the volatile Black Rage poet/dramatist of the '60s.
The cord is not a noose – though the symbol resonates throughout the play – but a strap on a subway car hurtling through the bowels of an urban
jungle. Clay and Lula and the audience are on a horrific, 50-minute
journey on “Dutchman,” the most acclaimed work of the 1964 Off-Broadway
season.
The title of Baraka's play recalls the Flying Dutchman, a European cargo
ship that sank off Africa in 1641. As the ship split, the captain – whose
negligence contributed to the disaster – screamed: “I will round this Cape
(of Good Hope) even if I have to keep sailing until doomsday!” For more
than 300 years, there have been reported sightings of this ghost ship.
For Baraka, the new ghost ship is that subway car where Clay, a
well-dressed young black man en route to his comfortable home, meets Lula,
a white, apple-eating seductress, described by Baraka as “a tall, slender,
beautiful woman with long red hair hanging straight down her back, wearing
only loud lipstick.” As Lula, Michelle Procopio embodies the playwright's description, and
she's more – much more – than equal to the extraordinary emotional and
intellectual shifts demanded by Baraka's poetic script.
Director Al Germani's casting of Clay is even better on the symbolic
level. Patrick Kelly, obviously of mixed race, personifies the drama's
central conflict: How does a black man survive in a white society?
Kelly's strong presence, remarkable for a young man who is still learning
his craft (in SDSU's theater department), coupled with his racial
heritage, enhances a production that typifies Lynx's stated mission: “to
produce the work of world-class playwrights in an exciting, provocative
theater – that alters how we see and experience ourselves and the world
around us.”
Coincidentally, Baraka, ever controversial, wrote an angry manifesto in
which he defined his “Revolutionary Theatre” as one that “would force
change – EXPOSE! Show up the insides of these humans, look into black
skulls.” Germani and his company, located in an industrial center at the
north end of Morena Boulevard, are at one with Baraka's purpose.
Lula's moves on Clay at first seem to be merely sexual. In reality, she is
after Clay's soul. Pointing at his Ivy-League suit, she screams, “Boy,
those narrow-shoulder clothes come from a tradition you ought to feel
oppressed by. A three-button suit and striped tie? Your grandfather was a
slave; he didn't go to Harvard.” In a masterstroke of staging, Germani does not allow Lula to touch Clay,
at least initially. The director inserts an interlocutor (David B.
Phillips, who also provides sound effects and a variety of well-conceived
theatrical touches). This “Ghost” wears the mask of the minstrel show, the
19th-century entertainment that planted ludicrous racial stereotypes on
American stages. The contrast between Clay and the Ghost of slavery's past
is stunning.
Lula continues her assault on Clay's “whiteness.” To her credit, Procopio
does not let her diatribes become a one-note samba as she hits just about
all 88 keys in Baraka's poetic score. The tension mounts, almost
unbearably, as Lula turns Clay into an angry revolutionary. She commands
Clay to do what Baraka has done throughout his career: “Get up and scream
at these people.”
Even though Clay does scream – “All of those ex-coons will be stand-up,
Western men, and they'll murder you” – he eschews murder because it has
been the weapon of white society for centuries. Remember that red noose?
In another of Germani's inventive strokes, “Dutchman” is preceded by a
musical collage of African music (which Baraka calls Boogaloo Yoruba in
his play “Slave Ship”), including Billie Holiday's haunting “Strange
Fruit,” a song about the lynching of blacks.
Ironically, it is Lula, frightened by the angry monster she unleashes, who
turns to violence. As the lights go down, a tableau suggests such
resolutions are self-perpetuating.
The action and dialogue are frequently punctuated by riffs from Bill
Keyhayias' sax, all part of Baraka's plan to liberate the theater from
traditional Western formats. His is a theater of ritual where gesture,
dance, sounds and screams envelop the audience. The Lynx company succeeds
admirably in realizing Baraka's purpose on virtually all levels.
Save one. The 50-minute play would be better served at 52 minutes. There
are times when the actors speak so rapidly that Baraka's edgy poetry is
lost. The speedy delivery seems calculated by Germani, all part of the
anti-naturalistic style he uses so well throughout. Still, an otherwise
brilliant production leaves us a little bit frustrated.
Michael L. Greenwald, a professor of theater at Texas A&M University, is
a freelance writer.
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More Info
An Adam and Eve ritualistic allegory of mythical proportions, DUTCHMAN incorporates
Baraka’s Bohemian, aggressive, often shocking style, anti-racist sentiments, Jazz influenced musicality,
multi-leveled symbolism and radical black consciousness-raising that would
characterize much of his later work.
DUTCHMAN marked his transition from Bohemian intellectual and part of the Beat literary movement (Kerouac, Ginsberg. etc.) to militant advocate and crusader for the struggle of Black
America and personified his increasing expressive use of violent imagery.
“Steeped in jazz and its great innovators (Coltrane, Monk, Miles, Bird) Baraka anchors
himself in the music and makes his words sing with a wild, percussive insistence, and an
abiding, utterly artful grace.”— Robert Creeley
The driving force behind the Black Arts Movement, Baraka was an intrinsic part of the defining
of a new, self-determined black identity and the beginnings of an acknowledgment of the aesthetic
value and beauty of Black Culture and Art which included the shifting of Jazz
to recognition as a viable art form.
Written and first presented in 1964, DUTCHMAN reflected and participated in the violence
and severe racial conflict of the times.
1964 was a seriously eventful year which included the
birth and solidifying of the Civil Rights Movement, the passing of the Civil Rights Act, the EEO
Commission and Affirmative Action, lynchings, riots, widespread protest demonstrations
and Martin Luther King championing his nonviolent philosophy
featuring his “I Have A Dream” speech.
He is highly controversial and his work, especially DUTCHMAN, is incendiary.
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