(Speaking as a white person with limited perspective)
I didn't get the sense at all that Harlem itself was the butt of any joke. In many ways, it struck me as a loving ode to the culture, diversity, and humanity of the people who lived there. Some of the characters and circumstances were ridiculous in nature, but that ridiculousness seemed to come from a human place: Falstaff is ridiculous because of his brash personality, whereas Madam Ford and Madam Page are ridiculous because they're so savvy, and so eager to have fun, and Mama Quickly is ridiculous because she has her fingers in too many pies, and gets caught up in intricate schemes, in which she has a large amount of agency. None of that seems to me to be at the expense of the community, its people as a whole, or their Blackness.
Were the accents and mannerisms stereotypical though? Possibly. I can see a case for it, but if so, I would defer to a lot of what macnyc said: it was executed by artists with African heritage, and I don't personally know very many African immigrants, so I can't really say if it was authentic enough. But like macnyc said, I would also be curious to hear other African perspectives on the production, because it's true that marginalized artists are still capable of inadvertently indulging in problematic tropes about their people.
