New Play in Manhattan

Stevedore (by Paul Peters & George Sklar; Theatre Union, producer). It is an ironical fact that propaganda is always most enthusiastically received where it accomplishes the least. Stevedore, a drama of Negro peonage in the South, will certainly never be produced in New Orleans, on the docks of which its scene is laid. But it may deservedly run for months in the Civic Repertory Theatre on Manhattan's 14th Street, with febrile audiences largely recruited from the neighborhood. Union Square, centre of racial tolerance, is little more than a tear gas bomb's throw away.

The stevedore of Stevedore is a big taffy-colored buck named Lonnie (Jack Carter). A white woman has a row with her burly lover which ends by his choking her and knocking her down. Her hysterical screams bring a crowd. Unwilling to implicate her lover, she babbles that a Negro attacked her. Among the colored folk arrested for questioning is Lonnie. Unlike the other dejected crows in the lineup, big Lonnie refuses to drool servilely: "Yassuh, cap'n. . . . Nawssuh. cap'n. . . . Dat's right, cap'n. . . ." He has been helping a white labor organizer recruit a stevedores' union on the Stuyvesant Docks. He stubbornly stands for his rights, makes a bad impression at the police station.

Released,Lonnie instantly butts his kinky head into more trouble by complaining to Mr. Walcott, head of Oceanic Stevedore Co., that he and the other Negroes have been given short pay. Gruff Mr. Walcott (grizzled Dodson Mitchell, who last played in the 14th Street theatre during the Blizzard of '88) strikes him for his impudence, tells him that he is "a bad nigger."

"You mean," Lonnie says slowly, "I is a nigger you cain't cheat."

That seals Lonnie's doom.

The rape story is revived, feeling on the waterfront runs high. Lonnie is again arrested, escapes just before he is lynched. His flight fills four scenes with excitement. As Lonnie's peril increases and the play becomes more intense, its shabby cloak of propaganda happily falls away. Stevedore turns into a glorious melodrama in the grand manner of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. As a finale, the Negroes defend their homes from a white-trash mob led by a red-headed bully named Mitch, as lively a scene as ever came from the pages of Hugo or Dumas. When the white stevedores rush to the aid of the besieged blacks, the play's strictly partisan audience found itself cheering not for the symbolism of a workers' united front, but simply for a thrilling rescue.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.