NO N – – – – – S, NO JEWS, NO DOGS
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LIFE in the old Jim Crow regimes in the South was a constant battle for simple human dignity for African-Americans. John Henry Redwood, the sensitive African-American playwright who gave us the touching, tender and funny “The Old Settler,” set in 1940s Harlem, has turned his attention to the South in the postwar years.
In “No N – – – – – s, No Jews, No Dogs” – a revealing sign from the period – he takes a look at the small town of Halifax, N.C., through the lens of a small black rural family living there.
Alas, Redwood has not devised a story with enough dramatic force or believable shape to make the period live for us. He has devised a world of moralizers who lecture us. His family is the Cheeks family: young father Rawl; his wife, Mattie; and their daughters, bright Joyce, 17, who is reading the Iliad of Homer, and cheerful Toke, 12.
Their home (an awkward construction of designer Michael Brown) is visited by two outsiders: Yaveni, a yarmulke-wearing Jewish man from Cleveland who is visiting the area to do a survey (for whom, we do not learn) on the effects of prejudice on blacks and Jews, and Aunt Cora, a local black woman who wanders about wrapped in a black garment and a dark secret.
Events reach a climax when, while her husband is away, Mattie is raped and impregnated by a white bully. She knows that Rawl will seek vengeance and be killed if he discovers the truth, so she lets him believe the pregnancy resulted from a willing affair. Outraged, he goes north.
The kindly Jewish man sympathizes and tells us of his brush with racism; Aunt Cora takes a decisive step. Mattie has saved her husband’s life and can rebuild her life in the North. It is at once preachy and unconvincing, talky and turgid.
Redwood has been known for his rich female characters, but he falls short here. Mattie is played by Elizabeth Van Dyke with a unvarying grimness, as a character with a set, didactic purpose. The girls have some life: Adrienne Carter is a difficult, ornery Joyce, and Charis M. Wilson creates a lively young Toke.
Jack Aaron turns Yaveni into a preacher full of solemn lessons. The one performer who brings real life and texture to his role is Marcus Naylor as Rawl – he gets the feeling, suffering man’s tormented soul.