Word: mclver
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...MclvER Atlanta...
...GUESS WHAT?). The Negro Ensemble Company seems to be forging a dubious tradition of brilliantly staging mediocre material. The intentions of Playwright Ray Mclver to make a cutting satire of black-white relations in the U.S. unfortunately outrun his wit. But the players, under the direction of Michael A. Schultz, endow this "minstrel-morality play" with a lively inventiveness and bounce...
...Mclver's intentions unfortunately outrun his wit; the jokes are just not bright enough to shine up the cliches about Whitey's hypocrisies-ecclesiastical and lay. But the players of the Negro Ensemble, under the direction of Michael A. Schultz, endow this "minstrel-morality play" with a lively inventiveness and bounce it was never born with. Arthur French and David Downing are notable as a comic couple of end men in whiteface out to stage a "traditional American lynching" on a long-suffering black man (Julius Harris). There is some show-stopping (if irrelevant) footwork by a trio...
...himself finally intervenes, though he admits that "taking command is not my cup of Tetley," and Graham Brown plays him with elegance and panache in a sharp set of threads that is appropriately grey. But God and Author Mclver have a soporific tendency to repeat themselves until the play fights the players to a draw...
...company managed to make interesting evenings out of two rather lumbering efforts from Africa - Song of the Lusitanian Bogey and Kongi's Harvest. The play the Negro Ensemble offered last week lumbers out of dark est Georgia. God Is a (Guess What?) was written by Atlanta Schoolteacher Ray Mclver, whose intention was clearly to make a cutting satire of black-white relations...