N.Y. STAGE REVIEWS : ‘We’ Belongs on Film; ‘Tale’ Revives Legacy

When it is finished, sometime in 1990, Charles Fuller’s “We: An American Adventure” will have been a massive undertaking: a collection of five, maybe six plays dealing with black life during and after the Civil War.

So far, Fuller’s first and second plays have made it to the stage. “Sally” and “Prince,” running in rep at the Negro Ensemble Company’s Theatre Four, are the launch-pad of this epic story. Parts 3 and 4 are promised next season and the rest next year.

Like so many beginnings, “Sally” and “Prince” are slow, a bit confusing as they unravel, but ultimately a straightforward account of the first black regiment to fight with Union soldiers against the Confederacy.

The centerpiece of these plays is the conflicted role of Prince Logan (Samuel L. Jackson), sergeant and head of this unit, a model soldier who eventually must choose whether to fall in with his men in their struggle for equal pay--or allow them to be shot for insubordination when they refuse to fight because of the wage dispute.

The danger here is oversimplification, and Fuller tries to avoid it--not always successfully. We first meet Prince in “Sally,” the tale of a Southern black widow (Michele Shay) with whom Prince falls in love and has an affair. He also develops an affection for Sally’s spirited son Yocum (Alvin Alexis), a boy with more eagerness than savvy who joins the regiment and becomes Prince’s personal protege.

But it is Prince’s difficult relations with his white superiors that captivates our attention and Fuller’s attempt to make the white officers compassionate men trapped in an inflexible system.

The white general (William Mooney) and his lieutenant (Larry Sharp) admire the black sergeant for his discipline and devotion to duty. They also know that paying black soldiers $7 a month instead of the $10 the white men get is unjust. But they are powerless to change it and run headlong into the disasters of living by the letter of the law.

There’s no point in divulging more of the plot, which actually promises to grow more interesting and complex as new plays develop (it seems that a third piece, “Jonquil,” about the visionary blind mistress of one of the unit’s soldiers, has already been written).

The current productions don’t live up to the unfamiliar and significant content of the plays. Charles McClennahan’s raked, bare set and Arthur Reese’s flat lighting give “Prince” and “Sally” a primitive, bare-bones look. Coupled with the softness and slow tempo of Douglas Turner Ward’s direction, the stagings overall lack the urgency and real sense of action required.

A final question: Is there a screenplay struggling to get out here? So far, “We” is a passionate but linear narrative with the potential of developing into a full-fledged saga, one that would end in 1900 or roughly where August Wilson’s series of black family plays begins. Even were these Negro Ensemble productions more compelling (curiously, even Shay seems to hold back as Sally), it’s hard not to wonder if “We: An American Adventure” wouldn’t be more American and more adventurous as a big screen movie.

At 1 Sheridan Square, meanwhile, no such danger exists. The Ridiculous Theatrical Company is having a resurrection that continues the legacy of founder Charles Ludlam (who died of AIDS at 44 in 1987) in the person of Ludlam’s longtime companion, on and off stage, Everett Quinton.

No chance of a movie here.

Quinton gives us a new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” written and performed by him on the flimsiest of excuses.

A baby is left at this contemporary transvestite performer’s front door on the very night of his big break. In order to quiet the tot while he gets ready for his act, Quinton tries telling him stories. Fairy tales don’t cut it. Dickens’ tale of revolutionary exchanges and switched identities in a France ruled by the guillotine does.

What are we to conclude? That today’s babies love blood and gore as much as anyone? Unlikely. More likely it is that this labored event provides the Ridiculous with what it has always valued: a tentacled excuse for on-stage shenanigans (including a functional bathtub and microwave oven), with plenty of colorful characters for Quinton to impersonate (none with so much relish as the knitting Mme. Defarge) and a treasure trove of excuses for turning found objects into props (such as bird cages for a bustle and a bed for the Bastille).

The narrative isn’t always sustainable and some of the visual gags run thin, but this is the first new text at this theater since Ludlam’s death, and a piece that, for all its shortcomings (including sheer length and some trashy or superfluous jokes) lives up to the ridiculous spirit of the Ridiculous.

At least we now know that this cockamamie tradition can have a life beyond its creator.