BUFFALO NEWS REVIEW 3/5/10
"Labor Pains"
By
Colin Dabkowski BUFFALO NEWS ARTS WRITER
Allow
me to introduce Langston Hughes, socialist agitator. What's that?
You thought Hughes was an apolitical writer of powerful but safe poems like "Harlem"
("What happens to a dream deferred?") and "Dream
Variations" ("Night coming tenderly / Black like me")?
How wrong you are.
It
turns out, much to the chagrin of buttoned-up high school English teachers
across the United States, that Hughes' identity was as wrapped up with the
concerns of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as with those of Frederick Douglas
and Paul Lawrence Dunbar.
A
new Subversive Theatre Collective production of his 1934 play "HARVEST,"
is out to rescue Hughes' rabble-rousing image from the blunting force of
historical revisionism. The show, directed by Subversive founder Kurt
Schneiderman, is a large-scale production of wide-ranging ambition that aims
for the stars but falls somewhat short.
The
show was produced with Subversive's increasingly common approach of combining
experienced actors with students and other amateurs to round a large cast, in
this case almost 20 people. This is a necessity born of the financial
and casting limitations that a company like Subversive faces, and thus
unavoidable. But it produces performances that often distract from the
material rather than highlight its nuances.
This
lack of subtlety isn't always a bad thing, as some sections of Hughes'
heavy-handed script are themselves somewhat devoid of nuance. But that
seems to be part of the point. As Schneiderman noted in his standard
pre-show introduction, Hughes wrote the play upon returning to New York from a
stint helping to organize farm workers in California. So impassioned was
Hughes about the workers' plight, he scribbled out the play in a period of
days, often accidentally mislabeling scenes and character names in his rush to
set the story down.
In
the play, a group of black, white and Mexican cotton pickers attempt to
organize a union to fight the unfair wages being paid by local farmers.
The farmers, cast in silhouette against a cloth backdrop, are presented as
unscrupulous, money-grubbing good old boys motivated to unthinkable violence
by their insatiable greed. The workers, alternatively, are depicted by
Hughes (and Schneiderman) largely as good-hearted laborers who are just out
for a fair shake. Surely, the actual situation contained more gray
areas, but Hughes' play actually presents a fairly accurate version of the
violent disregard with which most migrant workers were treated during and
after the Great Depression.
In
an inspired stroke, Schneiderman has periodically stopped the action of the
play to interject certain of Hughes' more radical and baldly Communist poetry,
which rings with forceful anger and indignation in the face of
injustice. Singer and guitarist Jean Dickson also gives charming
performances of classic protest songs between scenes.
"HARVEST"
tells us something true about the struggles of the working class, and provides
an opportunity to reflect on what has and hasn't changed since Hughes dashed
off this passionate piece of theater. And despite the production's
limitations, Schneiderman and Subversive deserve accolades for presenting us
with a perspective on Hughes' work that is worlds away from what we might have
learned in high school.
REVIEW
WHAT:
“Harvest,” presented by Subversive Theatre
WHEN:
Through March 20
WHERE:
Manny Fried Playhouse, Great Arrow Building
TICKETS:
$10-$15
INFO:
408-0499, www.subversivetheatre.org
cdabkowski@buffnews.com
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