Critic at Large

By Peter Bellamy.

Karamu's 'Trouble in Mind' has none onstage

It's just possible that "Trouble in Mind" at Karamu Arena Theater is the . best written and acted production of the theater's season.

"New York Critics thought enough of this drama by Alice Childress to give it the Obie Award as the best off-Broadway play of 1955. It would have reached Broadway had there not been a dispute between the playwright and the producer, who wanted to change it.

The play develops quickly and has great economy of movement under the taut direction of Edmond T. Jenkins. There is ironic laughter and a feeling of anticipation as it is obvious almost from the outset that there will be a violent personal confrontation.

The drama concerns a group of black and white actors in New York rehearsal of a play about a young black in the South who is lynched for allegedly engaging in political agitation to give blacks the vote.

At the start of rehearsals the four blacks in the cast play the "Uncle Tom"

Jean Hawkins

game to butter up the white director, because they need the jobs desperately.

But as the rehearsals proceed it becomes evident that one of the black actresses in going to explode at the phoniness of a play which asks one to believe that a black mother would send her son into the midst of a lynch mob.

Jean E. Hawkins, who has great dignity, presence, projection voice, and can sing, plays the role of the protesting actress with powerful anger and sincerity. She is a professional in every sense of the word.

Timothy Edwards, a Cleveland State University senior, delivers a superb performance as the constantly self-dramatizing, bigoted, arrogant poseur of a director, forever patronizing and denigrating the black actors in the guise of flattery.

Edward's subtley registers the character's bisexuality and is otherwise so offensive one would like to punch him. His whipping boy, the assistant stage manager and apparent homosexual lover, is played with fine restraint by Tom Adams.

Carol Kahn White provides humor as the black actress who tries to make her fellow actors think she is married to a wealthy man rather than a dining car waiter.

Jonathan McKenzie turns in a gem of

a performance as an intelligent black actor who behaves like one of Stepin Fetchit's witless film characterizations in order to make the white director feel superior.

Victor Karp is entirely believable as the successful white actor whose clumsy attempts to establish rapport with the black actors are crude and insulting. His recitation of a speech by a southern racist is a gas.

Betsy Reid is convincing as a young, liberal actress, fresh out of Yale Drama School, who all but falls on her face in trying to show how much she loves the black folk.

Glenn Colerider evokes compassion as the ancient theater doorman so brutally treated by the director.

I find the argument that the play is dated without value. While it's true that no Uncle Tomism ever existed at Karamu and that it is now almost non-existent on Broadway, there are still untold blacks who have to bow and scrape for whitey to keep their jobs.

The show runs through Feb. 15.