THE UNOFFICIAL "FREE MAN OF COLOR" on Broadway Thread — Page 2

I thought the first Act 1 was fine, but the second act never seemed to end. I think the main thing that needs to be done is chopping off a lot of the last 30 minutes or so. The end felt like a runaway train car in a way.

The sets were rather impressive with the house set from the first act being the most. I don't know that I have seen such a massive set before on a Broadway stage.

Any other news?

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The Broadway Doc dissects what A Free Man of Color does right and wrong.


A Free Man of Color, or Why Thomas Jefferson Sucks

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I enjoyed it more than most (apart from bjh) but I'll eat my hat if more than 1 in 5 critics offers more than an outright pan to lukewarm review at best.

It has moments of brilliance but not nearly enough to carry the play. I'd say roughly an hour of the running time is truly worth the time spent.

It has already been significantly trimmed as my preview last night stood at 2:45 minutes incl. intermission, but it doesn't seem to have helped much because every single criticism made earlier applies to the performance I just attended.

Gorgeous costuming, the set design is mostly fantastic, Wright is wonderful, the first 10 minutes are excellent, then it's steadily downhill until we're left with a meandering, albeit attractive, pastiche entirely lacking in momentum.

The idea and setting is excellent, and there are the bones of a great work here, but nothing short of an entire gutting and reworking of the script could possibly bring it out.

The large cast is exciting when they're all on stage, but the entire thrust of the play would benefit from at least 1/3 of the characters being cut/combined since far too many are two dimensional caricatures that are not particularly entertaining or critical in driving the story.

Guare and Wolfe took aim at a worthy idea and assembled a top notch production, they just went far far too wide of the mark to realize it's potential.

FREE MAN OF COLOR has a lot of very fine and interesting ideas that simply never come together into a coherent and interesting whole, and gets to be infuriating long before it finally decides to end. A shame, such a fascinating slice of history, there's a wonderful play or film to be made about this story. Alas, nobody connected with it knows how to make it work.

Lots of meta-theatrical tricks and gimmicks, like deliberate anachronism (references to Mick Jagger -- I think Napoleon would have preferred Julie Andrews to Jagger, by the way) and I never gave a damn about anyone on that stage. When they finally got around the big shouting match between Cornet and Thomas Jefferson, I actually had time to notice that the flag used as a drop had 15 stripes, which it turns out is historically accurate but should give you an idea of how completely uninvolving a theatrical experience this is.

A for Ambition. F for execution. Don't bother.

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Wright was on The Tavis Smiley show the other night talking about the show. No video up yet. If it does come up, I will share it.

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