Word: playing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first of these one-acters, Israel Horovitz's Morning, is black in every sense. The set and costumes are black, the people are black (or white, as I'll explain in a second), the humor is black. It is a strange play, one that insecure whites and Uncle Toms will call racist. Don't believe them...
...seen Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," he say. "Twice!" ), who arrives on this morning to murder some "black bastard" who knocked up his daughter. Tillich is rather upset to discover that the black boy he had expected to kill is now white. And, as he and the family play some explosive power politics during the course of the play, the family gradually arrives at the conclusion that "black is beautiful" after...
PLAYWRIGHT Horovitz lets everyone have it in Morning. The play's language- explicit and, as they say, coarse- will probably send a good deal of people out of the theatre within a few minutes after the house lights dim. And the playwright's handling of dialects (The white actors switch back and forth between Harlemese and East Side-esque.) is bound to scare a lot of whites into silence as the play goes on its hysterically funny...
...twists which it would be criminal to reveal. Ophuls similarly keeps a sustained irony from overweighting the episodes, by employing a formal inventiveness remarkably responsive to the nuances of each situation. The subtle differences of class, age, and character of each person affords Ophuls sensitivity to social behavior full play...
...lighting and sets, invites us to accept them for their beauty, for the pleasant romance of the drama and its trappings. The first episode continues this artificiality by omitting foreground objects and shoving the characters up against backdrops, divorcing their plain flat facial lighting from the elaborate play of shadows on the flat sets. When the characters decide to join this trivial game of love, the bright spots of light dancing on the walls behind them begin to hit their faces, and the circle of love-affairs begins...