Racial Unrest Brings Baldwin’s ‘Mr. Charlie’ Back Into Focus

With big cities on edge because of the latest Rodney King beating trial, maybe it’s the right time to reconsider what playwright James Baldwin was saying when he wrote his play “Blues for Mr. Charlie” in the 1960s.

That’s what director Kenneth Beider thought when he took another look at Baldwin’s drama, which was based on the 1955 Emmett Till case, in which the 14-year-old Till was slain by a white man for whistling at a white woman. The white man was acquitted. This was in Mississippi--and long before the days of civil rights.

Beider, whose authorized adaptation of the Baldwin play opens tomorrow night at the Hollywood Moguls Theatre in Hollywood, discussed the drama and its original reception by audiences.

“It’s amazing,” Beider says, “how this play parallels what’s going on in L.A. right now. At the time he wrote ‘Mr. Charlie,’ Baldwin was really torn between whether he wanted to follow Malcolm X or Martin Luther King. He was leaning at the time toward Malcolm X. The main criticism of the play was that it was too polarized. It ended up alienating the audiences, at least the white audience, because they felt they were being preached to.”

Years later, Beider says, Baldwin was asked about his own feelings concerning the play. Baldwin claimed that, if he had it to do all over again, he would have softened everything, adding shades of gray so that his point would be clearer and more accessible to playgoers.

Beider says the play is not about racism. “It’s about tribalism,” Beider says. “Tribalism is even stronger than racism. Those are very hard bonds to break. Baldwin put it well when he said, ‘What man has overcome his past?’ That kind of says it all. We’re so much into the differences between us rather than the common bond we share, it’s incredible.”

Beider, who was artistic director of Chicago’s Inn Town Theater Company and has been seen locally as an actor in several productions, including the Road Theatre Company’s recent “Balm in Gilead,” views “Mr. Charlie” as a memory piece, juxtaposing scenes to create a different balance between the story’s elements. Baldwin’s message about tribalism is clearer now, the shades of gray more evident, with new import, Beider says.

Hugh Dane, who plays the minister father of the murdered son in the play, and fellow cast member Simon S. Williams, were both growing up in the ‘50s when the Till case made headlines.

Dane, who was nominated for an Image Award in 1991 for creating the role of Willie in Inner City Cultural Center’s “Willie & Esther,” and has a recurring role in Fox Network’s series “Roc,” remembers those days well.

“I was in grade school,” Dane recalls, “when that Emmett Till thing hit. My perspective was one of a Southern Californian, where the prejudice was more subtle. But there were riots out here, school kids fighting in the schoolyard after what happened to Till in Mississippi.”

Dane remembers his shock when his family went to his father’s home in Pine Bluff, Ark., a couple of years after that, in his father’s 2-year-old black Buick. “We were driving down the street in Pine Bluff, and people in other cars were calling us ‘niggers’ and things. To experience that for the first time at that young age, it blew my mind. I couldn’t stand it.”

Dane does think the situation is better now, in spite of current events. “The pendulum swings,” he says. “For years race wasn’t even discussed. In the ‘60s and into the early ‘70s, you couldn’t turn on television without seeing a panel discussing race relations. Then Reagan came in, and it was all about greed and ‘me-ism,’ and making your own money. They said it didn’t matter what color you were. Now we’re into the ‘90s, and having these incidents happening again, so we’re finally talking about it again, raising the issues.”

Williams, remembered from films such as “Teachers” and “Heart of Steel” and who played both Othello and Emperor Jones at Actors & Directors Studio, also thinks things have changed.

Williams agrees with Dane that it’s better when race relations are in the open. “It’s on the front burner again. I’m a firm believer that change can come about.”

It’s the kind of change Beider says brought about his new thinking about “Blues for Mr. Charlie.” His adaptation is indicative of that change.

“We’re not going to let the audience off the hook this time around,” Beider says. “The play is no longer the dead end it seemed to be originally. All it says now is that there is a way, if we choose to travel that way.”

“Blues for Mr. Charlie,” Hollywood Moguls Theatre, 1650 N. Hudson Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays and Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 1:30 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Ends May 23. $12-$15; (213) 467-3394.