Adapting Langston Hughes’ 1931 work of verse The Black Clown to music and dance, as Davóne Tines and Michael Schachter have done at American Repertory Theater, accomplishes several things at once. It draws overdue attention to the now little-known but indisputably great Bard of the Harlem Renaissance. It presents an interpretation of African-American psychic experience that’s both incisive and persuasive. And it offers a tremendous showcase for 13 gifted performers to display every talent in their repertoire.
In the first 15 of Hughes’ 79 lines, his protagonist says he’ll adopt a clown persona because he’s “the fool of the whole world….poor and black and funny.” Tines takes a spotlighted microphone with Paul Robesonesque authority, using his rolling (and justly acclaimed) bass-baritone to wryly concede he’s “Not the same as you—.” Then, in the first of many staging surprises from director Zack Winokur, he dons not a red nose and floppy shoes but a tux, and the ensemble explodes into a joyful cavalcade of African-American show business. Eubie Blake, Billie Holliday, Cab Calloway, the Nicholas Brothers and more are evoked, repeating the refrain “Strike up the music/Let it be gay/Only in joy/Can a clown have his day,” and we suddenly perceive the black entertainment tradition as a safety net by which people of color could be accepted by the white majority.
The need for safety is illustrated in the next 13 lines, which take up the slavery legacy. Chanel DaSilva—whose choreography is superbly varied and electric—has an exuberant roundelay transform into a line of bent backs, moving behind backlit screens in an extraordinary shadow play of plantation horrors. (John Torres’s lighting is exemplary throughout.) Abe Lincoln on stilts offers the Black Clown a white sheet on which appears the Emancipation Proclamation (“Freedom!….One little moment to dance with glee”). That sheet will be used to cover the body of a homeless woman in the misery times that follow: “Not wanted here; not needed there/Black—you can die/Nobody will care.” A New Orleans-style second line winds through the audience to the ageless lament “Motherless Child,” giving plenty of opportunity to see the very specific acting done by each cast member as they mourn their dead. It’s devastating.
Hughes’s text offers annotations on music and mood for each of his 17 stanzas, and while Schachter has noted them he has gone way past them. His score features absorbing tunes in an extraordinary amalgam of styles: the blues and jazz of course, but also work songs, spirituals, and the gospel tradition. When the Clown is ready to “Smash my way through/To Manhood’s true right,” Schachter amusingly swings into 70’s wakka-wakka funk, as if to echo the Blaxploitation explosion of action stars smashing their way through. Under Jaret Landon’s assured direction, this is one of those scores so interesting and involving, you wish you could purchase it in the lobby on the way out.
Hughes never indicates (and the show doesn’t, either) the specific conditions leading the Black Clown to decide to “Tear off the garments/That make me a clown!/Rise from the bottom/Out of the slime!” We can only infer his “Cry to the world/That all might understand” is the product of two things: the strength of his character and the wellspring of support within his community, which finally empower him to announce with pride, “I was once a black clown/But now—/I’m a man!”
This production packs more food for thought and more sheer enjoyment into its 70 minutes than many another of twice that length. It merits the widest possible audience, including schoolkids of every race.
The Black Clown opened Sept. 5, 2018 at the Loeb Drama Center of the American Repertory Theater (Cambridge, MA) and runs through Sept. 23. Tickets and information: americanrepertorytheater.org
