When Broadway Was Black by Caseen Gaines

Author:Caseen Gaines
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

VALADA SNOW (CENTER) PERFORMING “MANDA” IN THE CHOCOLATE DANDIES, 1924. THE INSCRIPTION FROM SNOW TO EUBIE BLAKE’S WIFE, AVIS, READS: “TO A BROAD-MINDED WOMAN WITH A NO GOOD HUSBAND.”

Courtesy of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, Item ID #PP301.319

11

BETTER THAN SALARY

1924–1925

Just before the new Sissle and Blake musical comedy’s premiere at the Lyceum Theatre in Rochester, New York, on March 10, the producers changed its name to In Bamville, an on-the-nose reference to the fictional Mississippi plantation municipality where the show is set. The story begins on the last day of the town fair and centers on a horse race, as the track is the hub of Bamville’s economic and social scene. Mose Washington, Lew Payton’s character, falls asleep and dreams his horse came in first, and after winning the prize money, Washington becomes the most respected and powerful person in town. Comedy ensues during the extended dream sequence, and when he wakes, Washington finds that his horse wasn’t victorious after all. Instead, Dan Jackson, played by Ivan Harold Browning of the Harmony Kings, had the winning animal, and the show ends with Jackson and Lottie Gee’s character, Angeline Brown, the daughter of the manager of the Bamville Fair, marrying while surrounded by “a million little cupids.”

Despite the best efforts of the company in staging this highly ambitious theatrical extravaganza, early reviews were mixed. Variety issued one of the most generous, declaring the show “tuneful” and “pleasing” while countering that “it ran nearly an hour too long, was slow in spots, and much of the comedy misfired.” Others weren’t as kind. While the production certainly looked the part of a big Broadway show, white theater critic Ashton Stevens felt the writers and performers were trying too hard to prove themselves capable and worthy of playing in the heart of the Manhattan theater district. “This show seems to suffer from too much white man; it is both sophisticated and conventional,” he wrote. “You feel the arresting, the civilizing hand of Julian Mitchell in the direction. Nobody seems to go out of his head. Where we used to have splendid barbarians, we now have splendid barbers. It is…the fatal influence of the white man that makes the show seem second rate for all its costly costumes and scenery. There is too much so-called politeness, too much platitudinous refinement, and not enough of the razor-edged. There is, in a word, too much ‘art’ and not enough Africa. Yes, even in the music of that gifted melodist, Eubie Blake… No stab of originality. No feeling within you that Victor Herbert couldn’t have composed [the music] on a bet.”

Ashton Stevens’s critique—which echoed the sentiments of several white critics—points not only to the misconception some had that “art” and “Africa” were mutually exclusive but also the way Black performers were damned if they attempted to conform to the conventional standards of Broadway and damned if they didn’t. Shuffle Along was unable to secure a booking at a major house in Midtown, yet audiences came because it was different.

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