Gwendolyn Bennett

BWW Review: Theatre UCF's Energetic SPUNK AND THE HARLEM LITERATI is Weighed Down by its Own Ambition

Ambition can be a dangerous thing, whether you are a guitar-playing drifter in early Twentieth Century Orlando, or a playwright attempting to recontextualize an outdated work. In SPUNK AND THE HARLEM LITERATI, running through January 31st, UCF Theatre professor Be Boyd attempts to take an existing play by author and playwright Zora Neale Hurston, and ham-handedly shoehorn it into a framing device that seeks to admirably put the works of Hurston and her African-American contemporaries into proper cultural context. Unfortunately, the lack of connection between the framing scenes, set on a Harlem rooftop, and those of the play proper, set in rural Eatonville, Florida, robs both of any greater significance.