Good news, musical lovers. In a season when new tuners haven’t only been scarce but barely watchable or listenable—no titles mentioned for mercy’s sake—something highly listenable and watchable has arrived not a moment too soon.
It’s Black No More and is hand-delivered by composers Tariq Trotter, Anthony Tidd, James Poyser (all three members of The Roots, the Tonight Show band) and Daryl Waters, and by lyricist Trotter. They’re forcibly aided by bookwriter John Ridley, choreographer Bill T. Jones, and director Scott Elliott, who heads the producing New Group. Hearty cheers and heartfelt gratitude to them all.
Before going further, this welcoming reviewer should report that Black No More is somewhat short of perfect, but during the first half-hour or so gives the impression it will be. As the storytelling dips and revives during the rest of the two acts, the result is still far from a letdown.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
That hard-hitting story is lifted from George Schuyler’s 1931 novel, also called Black No More, in which Harlem denizen Dr. Junius Crookman (the imposing Trotter, sometimes known as “Black Thought”) creates a process by which as many Harlem denizens as want to can climb on something like a dentist’s chair and for fifty smackers have their skin turned white. (Yes, the Crookman surname is a blunt giveaway to the character’s devious impulses.)
Dr. Crookman’s first taker is Max Disher (Brandon Victor Dixon), a local playboy just days away from having fallen for blond Southerner Helen Givens. She’s on a New York trip with bigoted brother Ashby (Theo Stockman). So Max, now successfully turned white, eagerly leaves concerned friend Buni (Tamika Lawrence) and the rest of Harlem behind to follow him, if they so desire, to Dr. Crookman’s office.
He hotfoots it south where he calls himself Matthew Fisher and is such an instant hit with the intolerant denizens that he’s tapped to head the Knights of Nordica, which Schuyler may have chosen to stand in for the Ku Klux Klan. (They don’t, however, get themselves up in KKK-like garb.)
Gaining the enviable Nordica laurel, Max/Matthew steps over Ashby Givens, who’d expected the position supervised by his father Reverend Givens (Howard McGillin). Moreover, he meets Helen again and marries her, never realizing she has, irony of ironies, a hankering for Black men and only puts up with him in his current state to satisfy domineering daddy Givens.
Horrendous events follow, as Buni insists they will. When following Max to argue against his choices, she wisely repeats, “There are always consequences.” There certainly are, with, among other calamities, guns shot, an unfortunate pregnancy, and only a glimmer of integrated hope when Jeff Croiter’s lights fade on a handsome Derek McLane’s set dominated by tall grey-brick walls.
The point these creators make, taking Schuyler’s nearly century-old view, is that thoughtlessly desiring to be what you are not, never soothes the soul. Only the Crookmans of the world make profits and then usually only temporarily. It’s a point not unfamiliar in this 2021-22 season with its series of plays about Blacks suffering in a predominantly white society—and, worse, continuing to be thwarted at attempts to rectify the so-far-insurmountable situation.
The Black No More strengths are so numerous it’s difficult deciding where to start. All right, with the score, conducted with taste and tang by Zane Mark at the keyboards and seven others. The styles range across several genres, hip-hop not the least of them and a Trotter specialty. The r&b “I Want It All,” which Dixon sings as if his life depends on it, is the kind of plea that made charts back in the day when musicals regularly spun off hits. That’s just one of the 30-plus numbers, including, of all things, “Vitiligo,” which musicalizes the bleaching skin condition sometimes afflicting Blacks. (The topic is also addressed in MJ.)
Choreographer Jones is another of the production heroes. Throughout Black No More—although more often in the earlier sequences than the later—his imposing dancers thread through the action, suggesting the challenges and intricacies of the happiness-defying lives the focal figures endure. Sometimes moving in unison, sometimes striking eye-catching individual poses, the ensemble members are a pulsating counterpoint to the themes.
The cast is also top-drawer, in large part due to those with shake-the-walls-raise-the-roof voices. Dixon, Lawrence, and Damiano belt with stinging results. Some of their wailed notes seem to last for minutes. Many others of those notes are contributed by the always formidable Lillias White, who plays Madame Sisseretta and presides over that symbol of sisterhood everywhere, a beauty parlor.
Appearing on and off during the proceedings (undoubtedly because writers and director Elliot know what they’ve got), White is the one tapped to introduce the final song, “Victory for Love.” Actor-writer Trotter evidently wants to send audiences out feeling victorious rather than troubled at the downbeat episodes witnessed, and White goes some measure towards making that happen.
As with many, if not most, of the Black plays on offer over the last months, racial slurs proliferate, a fistful of them delivered by villainous brother Ashby. Their inclusion has the power of punches to the solar plexus. Therefore, more power to Black No More.
Black No More opened February 15, 2022, at Signature Center and runs through February 27. Tickets and information: thenewgroup.org
