Word: cereno
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...Benito Cereno--The Robert Lowell play in yet another production. At the LOEB EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE...
...turns out that Babu is Cereno's master, that he led the blacks in killing their masters and most of the ship's crew. He is using Cereno in order to capture Delano and force him to pilot the slaves back to Africa...
...abandon his prejudices (about dutiful servants and degenerate Spaniards) which make it impossible for him to comprehend rightly the situation, even with the mounting evidence that something is wrong and even when his own life depends on correct perception. He insists on the exactly wrong assessment--believing that Cereno's eccentric behavior signifies that the Spaniard intends to harm...
...them as anything but a threat to his life and a danger to his comfortable preconceptions. He presides while his sailors obliterate them with superior firepower. Babu, the last surviver, petitions Delano for mercy: "Yankee master, understand me. The future is with us." Over the protests of Cereno and Perkins ("We want to save someone") and while the lights dim to blackness, Delano empties his pistol into the black's body...
...sense only if the production's narrow reading of the script is expanded. While racism is essential to Delano's behavior, the TCB fails to suggest that the Yankee would defend his (national) values against any threat--racial or not--not by reason or mercy, but by force. Benito Cereno is less a tragedy of malice or vengefulness--suggested by the Theater Company--than of American blindness...