[re-post from another thread (
https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.php?thread=1024576&dt=1&boardid=1#ixzz15hVMxmSO), since this seems to be a better spot for it:]
I saw the very first preview of A FREE MAN OF COLOR, and then I, too, was at it's Opening performance tonight. It was 30 minutes shorter tonight, thank the theatre gods.
I disagree with you when you say it has nothing important to say. I think it does. I think the battle to be a free man of color in this "free" nation was an important one. I think it's important to tell the story of how a country fought so hard to earn its freedom but failed to fight to maintain it (and that history is repeating today with gay rights).
At least this is what I think the play is. It's hard to say. It's hard to say because the play doesn't know what it is. What starts as a sexcapade later becomes an intellectual piece, and then becomes a political play, and then again intellectual. Sex-comedy. Intellectual. Political. Historical. Political. Intellectual. The play tries to do too much. It tries to earn its "substantial" ending but there is so much setup that the audience doesn't need that by the time the ending comes, we don't care anymore. We just want it to end. (And end for REAL this time, but hint at an ending that actually just becomes a segue into a new scene.)
Jeffrey Wright's Act I performance is interesting and comical. Wright's Act II performance is exhilarating and colossal.
The play will win for Best Costumes at all awards shows for theatre this year.
Spotted in the house: Marian Seldes, S. Epatha Merkerson, Ben Stiller, Tony Kushner, and Ben Stiller.
"The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet."
--Aristotle
Updated On: 11/18/10 at 11:50 PM
