Old Play in Manhattan

Run Little Chillun (by Hall Johnson; produced by Lew Cooper, Meyer Davis and George Jessel) played for a while on Broadway in 1933, has since then had healthy revivals elsewhere. A Negro melodrama of sex and religion (which are made 0 seem much the same thing), its story is inept, long-winded. What has obviously fetched audiences, even if it has not sufficiently rewarded them, is the well-blended Hall Johnson Choir's singing of well-known spirituals and Hall Johnson's own music.

Dealing with the rivalry between the godly Baptists, the paganlike Pilgrims, Run Little Chillun climaxes Act I with orgiastic Pilgrim rites by moonlight, Act II with a pandemonious Baptist revival meeting. At both gatherings everybody sings like mad, but the voodoo-haunted Pilgrims' chorus is no match for the well-harmonized hysterics of the yea-sayers.

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