Sunday Morning Michael Dale: Baldwin Debates Buckley, The Brontës Rock Out and Billy Porter Revises The Life

It's all in the smirk...

Though conservative author, publisher and political commentator William F. Buckley, Jr. possessed a seemingly effortless command of an intimidatingly large vocabulary and a soft-spoken presence that casually projected the image of immense intelligence, to many of us viewers of Firing Line, the political and social issues discussion program he hosted for over three decades, it was that smirk that was his most dangerous weapon.

A sort of sideways smile that sarcastically expressed friendliness, it was used sparingly, but effectively, to signal to his liberal guest adversaries that he felt he had them trapped.

Novelist, essayist and playwright James Baldwin was, of course, more of a man of the written word but when he did appear on television, often as the only Black guest on a program, he had an off-putting stare that seemed to say to his white hosts that he was observing everything and mentally taking notes.

And while actors Teagle F. Bougere and Eric T. Miller aren't giving full on impersonations in director/adapter Christopher McElroen, extraordinarily fascinating theatre piece, Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley, playing through April 3rd at the A.R.T./New York South Oxford Space (tickets $25), those near-legendary facial idiosyncrasies are expertly captured.

The text is taken from an hour-long public television broadcast from 1965, where Baldwin and Buckley were the featured speakers at a Cambridge University debate on the question, "Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?"

The theatre audience watches the introductions directly from the TV show, but when the debate participants speak, the program is switched off and the live actors take over. And the sensibilities of an audience from nearly 60 years later take over as well.

First to speak are two Cambridge students. If it seems odd enough to the modern eye for a pair of young Englishmen to be debating the American Dream's effect on Back Americans, well look, they're both white. And, like Buckley, they're both wearing tuxedos while Baldwin is dressed more casually in a suit.

Spencer Hamp plays the earnest young man who speaks in support of the question in a presentation that adds up to little more than news reports. Charlie O'Rourke, as the student selected to argue against the question, uses statistics on average incomes to try and prove his point, capping it off with a joke that has him imitating a cartoonish Southern Black accent.

Baldwin, of course, is the only one who can speak on the subject from experience,

"The southern oligarchy," he explains, "which has until today so much power in Washington, and therefore some power in the world, was created by my labor and my sweat, and the violation of my women, and the murder of my children. This, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, and no one can challenge that statement, it is a matter of historical record."

Buckley attempts to use his adversary's popularity against him ("You cannot go to a university in the United States... in which Mr. Baldwin is not the toast of the town.") and turn the question around to the point where, for the purpose of winning a debate, he might have reinforced the feeling among some 1965 viewers that it was white people who were being victimized by the American Civil Rights Movement. And the scary part is that some 2022 viewers might feel the same way.

Live theatre, kiddos, live theatre...

The second act of director/adapter Billy Porter's substantially rewritten version of The Life -- Cy Coleman, Ira Gasman and David Newman's 1997 Broadway musical about the sex workers, pimps and hustlers of 1980s Times Square -- has a modern day commentator name JoJo (Destan Owens) teamed up with his 1980s self (Mykal Kilgore) to give audience members a lesson in the theory and the realities of trickle-down economics. While I was taking in Friday night's performance, there were a few isolated boos when the name of a certain American president was mentioned. The actors reacted in character and good portion of the audience chuckled.

Seconds later, an audio problem arose that became so severe that the actors were called off the stage. When the issue was fixed, they started the scene again, but now the audience was ready. So when that certain American president's name was mentioned this time, it received a full chorus of boos from the house.

Anyone who knows me knows my objections to revivals that edit and rewrite the work of deceased authors, even though the changes must legally come with the approval of those who control performance rights. But I also can't ignore that for most of the 20th Century Broadway musicals about Black characters have been written, directed and produced predominantly by white people. So if, under new Artistic Director Lear deBessonet, the new mission of City Center Encores! includes giving Black artists the opportunity to control how these Black stories are told, it's probably not my place to complain.

And I must compliment Porter on one especially striking moment in staging a second act scene where the heartless pimp Memphis, played by Antwayn Hopper, begins to rape Queen, a prostitute played by Alexandra Grey. The director/adapter places an ensemble of women upstage in the shadows, occasionally speaking key words in unison with the actors in the dialogue leading up to the assault. Then, when it happens, the two actors involved simply stand side by side facing the audience, speaking their lines as the background women read stage directions describing what happens. Perhaps this is meant to represent rape victims hoping they'll be believed as they describe a violation that occurred without witnesses, but it also makes a direct statement to the audience that the storytellers have chosen not to supply a visual of a sexual assault. And that struck me as an extraordinarily powerful choice.

You might call Branwell the Zeppo Marx of the Brontë Family...

Like the young crooner whose main function was to serve straight lines to his star wisecracking brother Groucho, Branwell Brontë, though he achieved a bit of literary success before succumbing of alcoholism, is quite often the forgotten sibling, next to his star sisters Anne, Charlotte and Emily.

Composer/lyricist Miriam Pultro generously offers the Brontë big brother a spotlight moment or two in her exuberant and enjoyable rock concert musical Glass Town which plays it's last three performances at The Tank this week (tickets $25), but it's really about the sisters.

Named for a fantasy world created by all four siblings through individual literary contributions, Glass Town on stage is a collection of original songs that express themes found in Brontë novels, explore their familial relationships and most effectively, hone into the artistic need to create ("Breathe") and the desire to be remembered ("Forever Known").

The author assigns each sibling a contemporary musical style to reflect their lives and works, with herself stationed at the keyboard playing Charlotte as a hard rocker. Playing bass, Katrien Van Riel's Emily is an introspect alt-rock vocalist and Emma Claye's Anne is a heart-on-her-sleeve indie pop specialist. Rhythm guitarist Branwell, played by Eddy Marshall, appears a bit emo at first, but after a few beers he transforms into a swaggering bluesman, who, perhaps a bit ego-bruised by the success of his sisters, seems intent on taking over the proceedings and bringing his act into the audience.

Playing behind them the night I attended were Music Director Alex Petti (guitar), Laura Zawarski (violin), Anthime Miller (cello) and Emma Kroll (drums).

The few spoken word moments in the piece are highlighted by a letter from Charlotte rejecting a suitor's marriage proposal, politely noting, "Mine is not the sort of disposition calculated to form the happiness of a man like you."

Under Daniella Caggiano's direction, the lead quartet always looks like they're having a lot of fun being with each other and making music as a family, and I had a lot of fun watching them.

Has Donald Trump changed Eugene O'Neill's A Touch Of The Poet forever?

That's the thought that crossed my mind last week at director Ciaran O'Reilly's flavorful and engrossing production at Irish Repertory Theatre when I heard the audience's reaction to the mention of Andrew Jackson.

The play is set in 1828, the year Jackson would thwart President John Quincy Adams' reelection bid to become to become the first American president who wasn't a Virginia aristocrat or an Adams.

When O'Neill completed the play in 1942 (it premiered in 1958, after his death), the Eurocentric way Americans regarded the 7th American president was as a populist who fought for the rights of the common (white) man. As someone who was educated by Long Island public schools in the 1960s and 70s, I can vouch for the fact that his attempted genocide of the south's indigenous population to make room for white farmers and the people they enslaved, was not a part of the curriculum.

But when our last president would openly praise Andrew Jackson as one of his predecessors he most admired, it seemed to accelerate a national knowledge of the bloodshed caused by the atrocities committed by his administration.

So when Robert Cuccioli, contributing another memorable performance to his distinguished career as Irish-born Massachusetts innkeeper Cornelius "Con" Melody, refers to Jackson as a "contemptible, drunken scoundrel" passing himself off as the "idol of the riffraff" it may ring to the contemporary ear a bit differently that it did to Eisenhower-era Broadway audiences.

Cuccioli puts up a stately facade that barely masks the crumbling interior of a disheartened man born into poverty whose life has been a series of unsuccessful attempts to be accepted into more refined society. O'Neill's conclusion no doubt was meant to point to an America that was shifting into a republic meant to serve the less refined, or at least, in what was known as The Age of Jackson, the less refined white males. Back in 1958, I think they called that a happy ending.

Curtain Line...

"Television will be the end of war 'cause who could bear it? Who could bear to see war right in your own living room?" - Rinne Groff's The Ruby Sunrise