At the start of the Obama administration, at the time of the NAACP's 100th anniversary, and in the midst of black history month, it may seem a bit off-putting to be offered such a vivid glimpse as Conversation With a Kleagle offers of the ubiquitous Ku Klux Klan's lynching culture in the Deep South during the Coolidge administration. On the other hand, it can be instructive to see just how deeply horrific race "relations" were in the former Confederacy at a time that most of us alive could not possibly remember.
Rudy Gray has based his play on a real person and a true incident. Walter Francis White was an Atlanta-born civil rights leader and writer who in 1931 became executive secretary of the NAACP and held that job for 25 years. Here he has become John Watson (Tim Weinert), a Columbia-educated journalist passing for white, as his mother had urged him to do. Writing for Chicago newspapers, he travels to one of the staunchest race-baiting parishes in Louisiana to interview a KKK recruiter -- known as a kleagle -- pretending as a white man to agree with his subject about the need to defend racial purity at all costs. The all-day drinking of "special coffee" at the kleagle's café -- this is during Prohibition -- further fuels his vitriol and that of his sidekicks. When White's cover is blown, he barely escapes. But the KKK exacts its grisly revenge by proxy, leading to life-changing consequences for most involved.
Kevin B. Ploth has directed the 100-minute piece with appropriate intensity, but his staging of a largish cast in several settings on a small stage isn't helped by the unevenness of the acting company. Two of the leads are very strong: Mike Pirozzi is consistently convincing as the chillingly evil kleagle, even earning a late-in-play pragmatism at odds with his earlier stance, and Erroll W. Greaves as Tookie, the Negro bootblack who effects Watson's escape and suffers for it, is touching throughout.
Presented by and at 13th Street Repertory Company as part of the Best of 13 Festival of Plays,
50 W. 13th St., NYC.
Feb. 13–March 15; Fri.-Sat. 7 p.m.; Sun. 3:30 p.m. (212) 352-3101, (866) 811-4111, or Theater Mania.
