A McCarter Theater presentation in association with Long Wharf Theater of a play in two acts by John Henry Redwood. Directed by Walter Dallas.
Cast: Brenda Pressley (Elizabeth Borny), Myra Lucretia Taylor (Quilly McGrath), Tico Wells (Husband Witherspoon), Caroline Stefanie Clay (Lou Bessie Preston).
John Henry Redwood has fashioned a warm pilgrimage to Harlem of the '40s with "The Old Settler." Soundly constructed and peopled with vivid characters, the play is a chapter in the black American experience skillfully laced with sweet sorrow, wry humor and poetic flavor.
"I never saw so many colored people in one place," proclaims Witherspoon (Tico Wells), as he arrives in Harlem from the rural South following the death of his beloved mother. Searching for his former girlfriend, Lou Bessie (Caroline Stefanie Clay), the young man takes a room in the apartment of two middle-aged sisters, Elizabeth (Brenda Pressley) and Quilly (Myra Lucretia Taylor).
Lou Bessie has changed her name to Charmaine, and has become a fast-living floozy, forcing her old beau to seek the solace of Elizabeth, the old settler (the phrase is a colloquialism for someone who is unmarried and pushing 40). What follows is a cautiously optimistic May-December romance. Donning a zoot suit and having his hair straightened, the gullible South Carolina youth quickly adapts to the tempo and temptations of city life.
The drama is generously spiced with echoes of old Harlem, filled with ready references to Smalls' Paradise, the Apollo Theater and Herb Jeffries on the movie screen as the Bronze Buckaroo, plus an enveloping dash of Ellingtonia.
Clay as Lou Bessie delivers an effective blast of sass and arrogance in a largely one-dimensional role, and Taylor garners many lusty laughs as the protective and judgmental sister.
Harboring the old wounds and disillusionment of a long-ago courtship, Elizabeth is acted with studied restraint and despair by Pressley. Like the betrayed spinster of "The Heiress," the actress invests her old maid with dignity and a quiet strength in the play's chilling final moments.
Loren Sherman's tenement apartment set comfortably recalls a picturesque era, as do the period costumes by David Murin. Walter Davis has staged the piece with a keen awareness of time and place.
Following a staged reading at the O'Neill Theater Center, the play was produced in Russia by the Russian Theater Union in 1996. A run at New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre follows this engagement.
Set, Loren Sherman; costumes, David Murin; lighting, Frances Aronson; sound, Stephen G. Smith; stage manager, Cheryl Mintz. Artistic director, Emily Mann. Opened Feb. 4, 1997. Reviewed Feb. 7. Running time: 2 HOURS, 17 MIN.
Contact the Variety newsroom at
news@variety.com