Turning To Black Roots

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

TITLE: THE AFRICAN COMPANY PRESENTS RICHARD III

AUTHOR: CARLYLE BROWN

WHERE: ARENA STAGE, WASHINGTON

THE BOTTOM LINE: From a forgotten corner of early black America comes a play pertinent to today's multicultural debate.

NEAR THE END OF HIS DRAMA about an actual 19th century black stage troupe that briefly competed with Junius Brutus Booth, sire of the estimable Booth acting | clan, Carlyle Brown makes clear that much of his interest in the story is its pertinence to the multiculturalism debates of today. The African Company of 1820s New York City was, he recounts, harassed and shut down by white authorities who resented its ambition, feared its competition with white theaters (as when the Africans' Richard III was to play opposite Booth's version of the same play) and recoiled from the notion that European classics were within the intellectual grasp of former slaves.

In barring blacks from the dominant culture, Brown suggests, whites effectively turned them toward their own heritage. Indeed, the historical African Company followed mocked-at stagings of Richard III and Othello with dramas about Caribbean slave revolts, apparently the first plays by African Americans ever staged in the U.S.

While his theme offers great potential, however, Brown's storytelling falls far short. The white world in The African Company is limited to a bigoted, apparently Irish cop and a slimy, apparently Wasp businessman. The five men of the actual company are reduced to three -- one who is unrequitedly in love with the leading lady, another who is loved by her but doesn't reciprocate her trust, and an older third who is limited mostly to low-comedic shenanigans. The women are equally stereotypical.

The characters seem only minimally self-aware, so their big speeches and dramatic moments sound shoehorned into their mouths. Director Tazewell Thompson's lugubrious pace doesn't help. But the basic idea is exciting enough that the play deserves to be seen. If the playwright digs deeper into these people -- what in them feels American, what feels African and what seems caught in a limbo between -- a future production may justify great expectations.