The Blame Game

By T.E.K.

BLACK PICTURE SHOW

by BILL GUNN

Until recent years, no one could have imagined that rage would be peddled as theatrical entertainment. In its osmotic effect, this viciousness of attitude poisons whatever theme the playwright may have thought he had. The playgoer leaves the theater in a state of psychological dishevelment as he might a hospital room after visiting a patient who is running a dangerous fever.

In Black Picture Show, Playwright Bill Gunn's hero is already hospitalized, or rather, confined to a Bronx, New York City, mental home. Alexander (Dick Anthony Williams) has gone mad, but he has been a black poet, playwright and screenwriter of merit. Fragmented episodes indicate how he has bobbed for the white man's Golden Delicious apple and drowned in economic and psychic abasement. He is dying; perhaps he is already dead. Obfuscation ranks high among Playwright Gunn's defects.

What is Gunn driving at? He is saying that Alexander, an artist of seemingly impeccable integrity, has sold out and been destroyed by his yen for lucre. This is twaddle. No artist has ever been corrupted or humiliated by the quest for cash unless he was a willing accomplice.

Reverse Racism. Need one add that Playwright Gunn is not at all satisfied to make this a human fallibility? He persists in what has become for some an article of faith and fallacy-- that some whitey somewhere is prostituting the black brothers for gain. Just to spell it out in the corniest imaginable terms, Playwright Gunn has Alexander's wife sue for a contract with a white homosexual film producer (Paul-David Rich ards), and she has to kneel on the floor to pick up the largesse he languidly strews in the form of $1,000 bills. Meanwhile, the producer's wife (Linda Miller) sashays round the room in a cocaine-sniffing trance. Racism is abhorrent; let the same be said for reverse racism.

The cast is exemplary. In the key role of Alexander, Dick Anthony Williams strikes a plangent note of pain. The rest of the cast is incomparably finer than this derelict play deserves. Producer Joseph Papp, at whose Vivian Beaumont Theater Black Picture Show is being presented, demonstrates again his illusory belief in the power of drama to effect social change, and his un flinching generosity to a fledgling play wright by giving him a chance to begin, learn and try again.

qed T.E.K.

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