Black on Black

BLACK VISIONS

Four Playlets, by SONIA SANCHEZ,

NEIL HARRIS and RICHARD WESLEY

Current plays written by blacks about blacks display strange and interesting aspects of the prickly pride of the outcast. They almost brazenly embrace some of the least admirable notions about blacks held by many whites --that they can be lazy, foulmouthed deadbeats addicted to alcohol, gambling and promiscuity. Another aspect of black drama is that it bears a surprising relationship to the class-conscious plays of the '30s. The manner is naturalistic. The tone is hortatory. The focus is not on individuals but on a downtrodden group undergoing a consciousness-raising exercise.

The four one-act pieces that constitute Black Visions contain both of these elements. Son//; is an old Mississippi woman's soliloquized lamentation. She tells and mimes the bone-wearying troubles of her existence, a Beckettesque journey from nothingness to oblivion. Gloria Foster makes a triumph of this taxing role through her unremittingly somber presence and power. The next two playlets, Players inn and Cop and Blow, are set in a bar, the gaudy aquarium of tropically colorful sharks who prey mercilessly on the vulnerable fish of the ghetto.

The last and best item of the evening is Gettin' It Together, the Story of a man and a woman who can neither stay together nor keep apart. Coretta (Beverly Todd) has had a son by Nate (Morgan Freeman), her lover. He likes to take the boy on picnics, but he also likes to keep other women on the side. Coretta wants the security that this black man cannot give her, and Nate wants the freedom that the white world will not allow him. They are caught in the bittersweet toils of their love, and Richard Wesley has written a tender, sad and compassionate play that is utterly and luminously honest. T.E. Kalem

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