Presented by and at the Hudson Guild Theatre Company, 441 W. 26 St., NYC, June 14-29.
The Hudson Guild Theatre Company's revival of James Baldwin's rarely produced "Blues for Mr. Charlie," a 1964 Broadway commercial failure, demonstrated both its strengths and its weaknesses. Suggested by the case of Emmett Till, a black youth lynched in Mississippi in 1955, the play was probably ahead of its time. Director Marvin Kazembe Jefferson gave this play by one of America's most eminent novelists a trenchant, powerful production.
In investigating race relations in a small Southern backwater during the civil rights era, Baldwin used many techniques: flashbacks, choruses, and minimal scenery (such as in "Our Town"), plus monologues and recitations of characters' unspoken thoughts (such as in "Under Milkwood"). Given a four-hour running time when uncut (wisely edited by Jefferson to two and a half) combined with such varying styles, Baldwin's play is unwieldy yet provocative.
The play is now a time capsule of a bygone era: Its Southern whites are all stereotypical redneck bigots, while its black characters are more three-dimensional, but universally downtrodden. The play does little to explain racism; it simply demonstrates how it works. This does not prevent some scenes from being extremely disturbing and dramatic.
Jeff Garlin played a militant black who returns to his hometown and is murdered by a local shopkeeper. The play climaxes with the accused's trial. Garlin was offbeat casting for the victim, playing him as a fraternity kid. In her understated way, Rasheeda S. Sampson as the college student who loves him was very effective.
Most powerful was Jefferson's own performance as the murdered man's estranged father. Jim Furlong gave the subtlest performance as the local newspaper editor who is the town's only friend to blacks. Brian Poteat's racist shopkeeper was frightening in his self-assured ignorance, while Kim Korby Fraser made his troubled wife a sympathetic character.