Race on Boston's stages, Part I

The young Paul Robeson. Eighty years after his Othello, it's still rare to see an African-American, Latino or Asian Hamlet, Lear or Macbeth.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of conversations devoted to questions of race in the Boston theatre.  In this post, I will be sharing space with my IRNE colleague Beverly Creasey, who covers theatre on her own blog, the Boston Arts Review (which, btw, you should read regularly). I asked Beverly to engage in this dialogue as I felt she could offer a unique perspective on issues that have become top-of-mind again for the community after a spirited forum at last summer’s Theatre Communication Group conference, and the announcement of a “Diversity/Inclusion/Gender Parity Task Force” initiative by StageSource.  So without further ado -

TG: Now Beverly, you've been involved in what has been called "non-traditional" casting for a long time – maybe since its beginnings; you were one of the first advocates for the practice locally. I can remember when critics like Arthur Friedman of the Herald used to question in print whether actors of color could convincingly play “white” roles, so I appreciate your pioneering work.  But tell me a little bit more about your efforts in this area, and how you feel the casting situation has changed in Boston.

BC: Well, for a little background on “Non-Traditional Casting” (NTC): In 1986 the Theater Communications Group (TCG) did a study which revealed an appalling pattern of exclusion for a lot of Americans in what was supposed to be their own theatre. Something like 90% of the professional productions in the U.S were cast with Caucasian actors. The TCG then began an initiative to promote access to non-white actors and actors with disabilities so that casting people would see the possibilities (and advantages) of hiring/casting Chekhov or Shakespeare or Wilde with actors who reflect who we all are. (Imagine the resonance of a physically challenged actor ruminating on his disabilities as Richard III, or a black actor in Chekhov discussing serfdom – i.e., slavery. Thanks to NTC, I have seen both.)

So I worked with TCG on a Boston conference and then ran the Boston NTC file (of actors, playwrights, directors, tech people etc.) until it was adopted by StageSource as their "unity file." This was essentially before Internet access. Now you can go to the StageSource website and pull up the "actors of color" file. I know it's hard now to believe that this was even an issue, because today most of Boston's theaters cast non-traditionally – to some extent - as a matter of course. So NTC has been an unqualified success. The excuse used by theaters back in the day to exclude actors of color was always some variant of "We cast the best actor for the role," which of course was code for "the best white actor” – meaning trained at the right school, familiar with the right people, more acceptable to the subscription audience, etc. I thought that excuse was a thing of the past!


TG: The bottom line then is that the situation slowly improved for actors of color, and there seemed to be a new understanding among casting directors – that many roles, particularly classical ones, were much more widely castable than (white) theatrical tradition had dictated. But recently you’ve seen some casting decisions that have disturbed you, can you tell me more about that?

BC: Well, this past year I've noticed something disturbing recurring several times. (I see about 200 small and large theater productions a year). I've seen repeated instances of the casting of white actors in parts either specified for, or originated by, actors of color, like the “Brother” role in Songs for a New World.

TG: So in an ironic twist, you began to see casting of white people in those few roles that had long been reserved for actors of color.

BC: Exactly. Even though it's absurd to hear a white man singing/talking about being black. Which by the way, has happened twice to Jason Robert Brown's Songs. Two different productions in less than a year!

TG: Maybe we should re-title that one Songs for a White World . . .

BC: What are these people thinking? They didn't even have the sense to change the lines and take out the ethnic references! It also happened to A Chorus Line this summer, at a big Equity company that has often cast nationally - a white actress played the role of the Asian-American dancer (who even talks about being stereotyped!!). I asked why this was the case and was told they “couldn't find anyone." Now this has been quite a year for Asian-American women on the stage and just off the top of my head (without consulting StageSource) I can name four local actresses. So the real answer is they didn't try very hard. They didn't go to StageSource. They didn't call me. There aren't many roles out there for actors of color, so doesn't it seem cruel to take away the few opportunities there are? A critic wryly suggested to me that this is just turnabout-fair-play for Non-Traditional Casting - I would have let out a blood-curdling scream, but we were in a theater at the time.

TG: Hmmm - was that critic me? (Thanks for not screaming, btw). But seriously, just to play devil's advocate for a minute - I'm wondering if we could pursue the reasoning behind that excuse a little further, and either find the flaw in it, or begin to at least better understand it. For if actors of color are now being represented on many, if not most, Boston stages, doesn't the urgency of non-traditional casting somewhat diminish? And doesn't that mean that the very logic of NTC can be flip-flopped (sorry, Governor Romney) in some cases? I mean last time I checked, just about every actor I know was looking for work, not just the actors of color! And don't casting directors work with networks of people they know and trust, who inevitably often reflect their own experience and ethnicity?

But at this point I'd like to take a break - Beverly and I (along with, I hope, other members of the Boston theatre community) will chew on those arguments further in the next post in this ongoing series.

(To be continued . . .)

Has the parade passed the musical by?

Brendan McNab and ensemble in Parade.

One of the happiest surprises of Boston's burgeoning theatre scene has been its newfound expertise in musicals. A decade ago, musicals were rare on the small theatre circuit; today, they're the highlights of many theatres' seasons - Company at SpeakEasy, Into the Woods at the New Rep, and Urinetown at the Lyric all immediately come to mind.

Lately, however, this triumphal march has suddenly stumbled - over the musicals themselves. This spring, the Lyric produced Michael LaChiusa's See What I Wanna See (which I tore into here), the New Rep mounted Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party, and now SpeakEasy has staged Jason Robert Brown and Albert Uhry's Parade - all local premieres, all recent New York "hits" (that is, they played on or near Broadway) and all produced at the same high level we've become accustomed to. But in all three cases, the performances easily eclipsed the quality of the material (see my earlier post, "Please, more masterpieces" for similar complaints about productions of new plays).

What gives? Is the musical in crisis? Well - yes, obviously; whatever people may say about LaChiusa or Brown, Sondheim has no heir - or rather he's got heirs but no rivals. Strange as it may sound, if and when a major new musical talent emerges, his voice will probably not be in the Sondheim tradition - indeed, he will probably challenge, if not repudiate, that tradition.

Because it's obvious that Sondheim sans Sondheim himself is pretty thin stuff; with lesser hands at the helm, his through-sung pop operas easily drift onto the bland shoals of arty pastiche. In fact, even with an extant model for the lyrics (as Lippa had for The Wild Party, Joseph Moncure March's original, book-length poem), his younger followers often fall short.

Take, for instance, just a few lines of March's classic ode to Jazz Age excess (below, an image from Art Spiegelman's illustrated edition):

Her body was marvellous:
A miracle had fused it.
The world had seen it -
And a good part had used it.

Imagine what Kurt Weill could have done with that. Or how about:

Black took a drink as they passed the table.
A long one;
A strong one;
Then suddenly felt unstable.
The room blurred.
The room receded.
Another drink was what he needed!

The tone is immediately apparent: casual, callous and drolly misanthropic - the exact opposite of today's earnest, self-aware-yet-blinking-back-tears default mode. And as long as Lippa can toe this line, The Wild Party is at least somewhat bracing. But as if pulled by the gravitational force of new-age schmaltz, the composer soon slips from period jazz into all kinds of light latin and pop-rock styles, and his lyrics likewise slide from stringent to sappy, as in:

Out of the blue
Out of the blue
Your choices now are growing few
Today is what you make and how you make it
The step is yours to take
But can you take it out of the blue?

You see the problem. Or how about this:

Poor child,
Poor child,
Beautiful and bruised.
Poor child,
Pure child,
Virginal and used.

Yikes! Some party. It's hard to imagine William S. Burroughs being inspired by that (he once said March's poem made him want to be a writer). And with such lame lyrics, it's no wonder that Lippa, LaChiusa and Brown are also melodically challenged; they're pretty good at snappy hooks (such as Brown's "Big News!" or Lippa's "Raise the Roof"), but their ballads tend to "soar" the same way 747s do.


Marla Mindelle and Ensemble in The Wild Party.

Sigh. Still, I suppose we can't expect theatres to stop doing new musicals just because they're bad. Of the local directors, Rick Lombardo has the biggest jones for this kind of thing, and his flamboyant, relentless production of The Wild Party probably came closest to putting over its script and score through sheer energy. Lombardo's leads, Marla Mindelle as bad-girl Queenie and Todd Alan Johnson as sad (as in sad-istic) clown Burrs, threw themselves into their roles with abandon, but their gonzo performances almost got lost in the chaos of the eponymous party, which erupted into a dancing show like Boston has never seen; the chorus literally did backflips, and if choreographer Kelli Edwards gave her tireless hoofers no respite, at least they got to shed their clothes as they overheated. This wasn't the only attempt to shock us that was touching in its naivete: folks often squatted over a toilet when they weren't miming spread-eagled coitus. (You haven't lived till you've watched simulated sex next to a little old lady with a walker.)

Alas, despite all this strenuous decadence, the production only fitfully connected with us, or its material. Leigh Barrett stopped the show with the evening's one truly witty number, "An Old-Fashioned (Lesbian) Love Story," but as Noel Coward might have quipped, at the time the show was basically running in place. Still, there was a nicely brassy turn from Sarah Corey as a belting flapper, and Maurice E. Parent brought real sizzle to his moves as Mr. Black. Over the long haul, however, the show's very energy tended to work against it; it's hard to look cool when you're constantly breaking a sweat.


Brendan McNab (Leo Frank) with Bridget Beirne (Lucille Frank) in Parade.

Parade, by contrast (at SpeakEasy Stage through June 16), was beset not only by undistinguished lyrics but by book problems as well. Some local critics felt the piece, which deals with the famous railroading, and eventual lynching, of Leo Frank for a murder in 1913 Atlanta, was painted with too broad a brush, but its real problems were subtler - Alfred Uhry, of Driving Miss Daisy fame, simply failed to dramatize the fascinating crux of this case: why did Atlanta turn against the Jewish Frank and instead trust the testimony of African-American Jim Conley, who most likely committed the crime? Both were members of minority groups, after all, and if anything, one would imagine - to put it in the horrid calculus of bigotry - that Frank's religion would trump Conley's race (especially given the assimilation of Jews into Atlanta society at the time). Yet the opposite occurred - the mob sided with Conley; but why?

To tease apart this conundrum, of course, would lead to fascinating, but ticklish, questions of assimilation, resentment, and religion, with, perhaps, black as well as white villains - always a problem in our politically-correct culture. Parade wants to think of itself as daring, but no Broadway show would venture into the moral territory that a truly probing examination of the Frank case would require. Thus there's a void at the heart of the musical, which Uhry and composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown try to plug with such standard tropes as the growth of Frank's wife into a crusader for his liberty. Uhry and Brown also obliquely stress Atlanta's nostalgia for Confederate culture (the tree at Tara from Gone with the Wind looms over the set) but never allow this idea to crystallize into a statement - are they implying that Frank's Northern pedigree sealed his doom, rather than his Jewishness? If so, it would be better if they actually said so.


Edward M. Barker, Kenneth Harmon, Shavanna Calder, and Nicholas Ryan Rowe in Parade.

Given the awkwardness of this material, the SpeakEasy cast navigated the show skillfully, and director Paul Daigneault orchestrated a smooth parade (sorry) of stage pictures. The capable Brendan McNab made a strong, but almost too sympathetic Leo Frank (the genuine article was an odder customer), and Bridget Beirne stood by her man admirably as wife Lucille. Meanwhile Timothy John Smith put over the first act's best number, "Big News," with energy to spare, and Edward M. Barker, Kenneth Harmon, Shavanna Calder, and Nicholas Ryan Rowe brought even more power to "A Rumblin' and a Rollin'" (Barker, who played Jim Conley, was equally impressive on the chain gang in "Blues: Feel the Rain Fall.") But elsewhere Brown's music and lyrics failed to catch fire; like Lippa, he tends to write direct, almost banal recitative, and then tries to goose these flat statements into song with rippling arpeggios and sudden flights up the scale. Often, however, Brown's lyrics resist his ministrations, as in this memorial to the murder victim:

Did you ever hear her laugh?
When she laughed, you swore you’d never cry again.
Did you ever see her smile?
Her smile was like a glass of lemonade.
And she said funny things,
And she wore pretty dresses,
And she liked to see the pictures at the VFW Hall,
And she loved ridin’ swings,
And she liked cotton candy,
But I think she liked the pictures best of all.

Or how about this bald statement of identity politics from Leo:

I'm trapped inside this life
And trapped beside a wife
Who would prefer that I'd say "Howdy!", not "Shalom!"
Well, I'm sorry, Lucille,
But I feel what I feel
And this place is surreal,
So how can I call this home?

Is this sort of thing Sondheim's fault? I suppose not - but it may be the fault of those who too-easily buy into the idea that the musical should "progress" into opera. There's no reason at all why the lines above shouldn't be lines in the book (except, of course, that they're not very good!). Indeed, it's hard to think of a topic less amenable to "pop opera" treatment than a complex, political story about the entanglements of racism and anti-Semitism. Yet good liberal sentiments tend to walk hand-in-hand with post-Sondheim attitudes. Perhaps someday this partnership will bear artistic fruit. In the meantime, I guess we'll have to settle for Parade, and hope that somewhere, someday, somehow, the anti-Sondheim will arrive.