Viewpoints: High-Stepping History

By Roger Wolmuth

Conceived by white men in the mid-1800s, minstrel shows evolved a format as rigid as a TV sitcom: performers, usually white, put on blackface makeup and offered up cakewalks, "coon songs" and darky-dialect jokes. Blackface survived until Al Jolson's mammy routines in the early 1900s, as proof that nobody found them offensive --nobody except black entertainers whose talents were suffocated by parody and caricature. Minstrel Man (CBS, Wednesday, March 2, 9 p.m. E.S.T.) provides a rare view of minstrelsy through the eyes of those victims.

Set in the 1890s, the story focuses on Harry Brown Jr., a black hoofer played with high-stepping panache by Glynn Turman. Dreaming of fame on the minstrel circuit, he teams up with Charlie Bates, a shady con-mannerist portrayed by Tony Award Winner Ted Ross (The Wiz). The stage is still the white man's domain, however, and Bates, Brown and their fellow black performers must stick to the formula of blackface makeup and plantation humor. They are forced, in vaudeville's looking-glass world, to imitate the white man's parody of blacks.

Bates and Brown start their own troupe and try to break out of the minstrel stereotype. Their tragicomic wrangle with white impresarios, redneck audiences and onrushing bankruptcy is described in a metronomic pacing and rousing ragtime music. Indeed, if Director William Graham can be faulted, it is for his emphasis on song and dance rather than discourse. Hardly a scene passes in which Graham fails to have his cast hoof and puff their way through one more number. Still, this does not stifle the spirited entertainment or the sorrowful history. For TV viewers who suffered withdrawal pains at the conclusion of Roots, Minstrel Man offers a timely fix. Roger Wolmuth

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