New Play in Manhattan

On Whitman Avenue (by Maxine Wood; produced by Canada Lee & Mark Marvin in association with George McLain) brings an upstanding Negro family to live in a genteel white neighborhood. At once there are rumbles and soon there is an uproar. A sympathetic landlord and a few others fight the rest of the community to let the family stay, but the pressure becomes too great and the Negroes are forced out.

Despite its painfully vital theme and generally plausible story, On Whitman Avenue is flattish propaganda and flatter theater. Working from the problem in, instead of from the people out, it consistently substitutes cardboard for flesh & blood, cliches for sharp, individual reactions. Dramatically, moreover, it soon hobbles, eventually halts. Fairly interesting while matters are coming to a head, from then on it can only .repeat its wrangles, restate its issues, and delay its ending.

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