Make Way for Melba Moore

Most plays get dated, but social-protest plays date more rapidly than others. They stand still while times change. Addressed to a flaming grievance, they lose their fire as the grievance is redressed. In Depression days, when unions were weak and embattled, the fierce rallying cry at the end of Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty--"STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!" --brought audiences to their feet with huzzahs. Today, playing before audiences sated with strikes, the line might well garner some Bronx cheers.

Similarly, the musical Purlie, fashioned from the straight play Purlie Victorious, which opened on Broadway in September 1961, has become peculiarly quaint. The downtrodden, stereotypical Negroes whom it portrays seem uncannily unreal. Blacks have taken large, if not mighty, strides forward from the Purlie Victorious caricature, as much in their own minds as in white eyes.

Purlie Judson, unlicensed preacher and self-appointed messiah of his race, hoodwinks neo-Confederate, bullwhip-wielding Ol Cap'n Cotchipee (John Heffernan) and secures the money to buy Big Bethel Church and preach freedom to the workers in the cotton fields. The problem is how to believe this in 1970. The wheedling, tricking, self-inflating Purlie embodies a slavery-induced personality that no longer applies to a race increasingly infused with the will and strength to command its own destiny.

While Cleavon Little brings a rip-roaring fervor to Purlie's evangelistic soliloquies, the cute cutup who steals the show, the evening and the audience's heart is the back-country girl (Melba Moore) who falls in love with Purlie. Melba Moore is a delightfully innocent minx, a girl who seems to have swallowed joy for breakfast. When she sings, the sun shines in, and when she dances, her feet play truant from the earth.

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