May 20, 1977 theater review: "The Slabtown District Convention" at the Paul Robeson Theater

 

Even though I hadn’t moved into the Features Department just quite yet, I was already assimilating into the corps of critics.

May 20, 1977

Satire on Conventions,

Group Strikes Nerve

           Mrs. Watchanna Scruggs, having already established herself on the side of style and progress, has more on her mind than just telling her sister delegates that the treasury contains the grand total of $2.

          “It cost me $3.75,” she says amid righteous sniffs, “to get here and report this $2.”

          She’s answered by a solemn chorus of “Amens.”

          The scene: A Black Baptist convention – deepwater Baptist – sometime in the early years of this century. What makes it so familiar is that the jostling for power, the gossip, the speeches and the complaints are a rite as ageless and inexplicable as conventions themselves.

          “And of course it says something about organizations,” director George W. Freeman says after the final gavel goes down in “On Their Way to the Slabtown District Convention.”

          Freeman picked up this near-antique of a satire – it dates back to World War I – in Washington, D.C., five years ago and has just finished bringing the one-acter back to life.

          It plays Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights plus Sunday afternoons now through June 4 in the Paul Robeson Theater at the African-American Cultural Center, 350 Masten Ave. near East Utica.

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ATTENDING IT is almost like becoming a delegate. Non-voting, naturally. It begins at the door, where usherettes in prim white dresses hand out programs made to double as paper fans.

          Equally involving are the characterizations.

          Freeman has succeeded in what must have been the herculean task of getting effective identities out of 25 actors who are on stage for the duration of the play.

          Each leaps up between spiritual hymns to give a report or a retort – the retorts being put down by Ardell Turner, who plays a jut-jawed sergeant-at-arms with badge and baton. He also pacifies delegates who are overcome by divine ecstasy.

* * *

THE ECSTACY gets especially thick during the guest sermon, delivered by a puffed-up bombaster in checkered vest, striped suit and polka-dot shirt played by Tex Smith.

          Jean Evans portrays the purple-hatted district president with an uncanny sense of the floppy frumpery and immense sweetness of those roll-eyed Black housekeepers who populated the old silent movies.

          A few of the other notables include Deborah Mathis as Mrs. Scrouge, Joyce Carolyn as a delegate who wants to know why God doesn’t send around some young preachers and Elsie (Moody) Smith as a gray-haired senior delegate who preaches herself into such a froth that the men can barely get her back to her seat.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Joyce Carolyn.

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FOOTNOTE: Joyce Carolyn can still be seen on stages around Western New York. She’s a wonderful singer.

          George W. Freeman was actor for 25 years before he turned to directing and was seen in “Driving Miss Daisy” at the Paul Robeson Theater and “Lost in the Stars” at the Studio Arena. His obituary in 2000 reported that he was a guest artist in many productions at the University at Buffalo and a bunch of community theaters locally. After he retired from his job at the State Department of Labor, he went on to do theater in Milwaukee, the Bay Area in California and finally in Birmingham, Ala.

          The play, written by Nannie H. Burroughs, an officer in the Women’s Convention Auxiliary to the National Baptist Convention for 60 years, is notable as one of the most popular church plays in the country for fundraising.