“Black Nativity ” Worth Two Visits

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30587, 2 November 1964, Page 12

“Black Nativity ” Worth Two Visits

“Black Nativity,” the Gospel song-play by Langston Hughes, which opened its Christchurch season on Saturday night, is really worth two visits—once to listen, once to look. It is an immediate and profound poem to the theatre, a visual and musical flourish of triumph, and the firstnight audience, momentarily forgetting its geography and tradition, reacted to it In a way unprecedented in this supposedly stuffy city with a tumultuous, rhythmic wave of applause that kept the cast on stage for fully 10 minutes after the final curtain.

Visually “Black Nativity” is about the richest show to visit Christchurch, rich In the purely esthetic sense of images that move boldly on the stage. The props were spare, almost non-existent-two benches, a low wooden platform and two ramps, highlighted from behind by a translucent screen that glowed in stunning colours—and the cast (except for the principals, who wore insistent blues, mauves and violets) were garbed in sombre black and white. But it was the starkness of the setting, the vital choreography and the severe discipline imposed on the players by Vinette Carroll (director) that created the visual richness. Among the more memorable images in the first act: the sensual dancing of Matthew Cameron as Joseph; Joetta Cherry as Mary, curled like a crushed flower in the spotlight before miming the birth of Christ, and the silhouetted angels marching off the stage at the close.

If the show was memorable visually, it was, musically, nothing less than triumphant. The score represented

almost the whole of Gospel music—rocking and reeling songs that shook the rafters; part-songs of polyphonous character; quiet, reflective songs; and songs that called for percussive effects from tambourines, hand-clapping and foot-stamping. The cast used no microphones and the range, dynamics and power of their darkly glowing voices was staggering. Alex Bradford, the male lead, was a compact, inelucttable presence (he dominated the stage whenever he was on it), and he sang with extraordinary range and power and superb control of dynamics and nuance. As a preacher he was affable and non-polemical. (A word ought to be interpolated here about the construction of the show. The first act, subtitled “A Child Is Born,” relates in dance, mime and song the events at Bethlehem; the second, subtitled “The Word Is Spread.” is mainly “sermons" by Bradford, linked by music.) Princess Stewart, a glowing figure in indigo, sang with less intense dynamics but equivalent power and punch: so did Barbara White, as the Archangel, whose halfmoaned, half-shouted “Amen” ripped the first act to an electrifying climax. Less insistent however, was the accompaniment which tugged painfully against the singers at times during the first act. The piano and harmonium were moved from the wings on to the stage for the second act, and the liaison tightened considerably; the pianist celebrated by incorporating a few snatches of Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring” in “The Lord's Prayer.” In any case, the troubled accompaniment did not prevent the singers (and. eventually, the audience) from making “a joyful noise unto the Lord.” “Black Nativity” is. indeed, a joyful noise unto the Lord —and to the world, and to the stage. It has, in Hughes's handsome text (narrated by Esther Rolle), wit and warmth, in the dancing and singing, sensual grace, and, in the lighting and settings, texture and style. And anyone who fails to be moved with or by it had better look to himself (or herself) for the reasons. —D.W.R.