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2008-03-22

by Ed Rampell

'Black & Bluestein'

Summary

The bruising reactions of race-estate

Article

Jerry Mayer’s autobiographical Black & Bluestein may be back by popular demand at the Santa Monica Playhouse’s Other Space, but Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has made the dramedy’s racial politics extremely timely.

African-American homebuyer Daniel Black (John Eric Bentley) seeks to purchase a house from Jewish builder Jeff Bluestein (the droll Loren Lester of TV’s The Facts of Life) in a St. Louis suburb with a majority Jewish population. As Daniel enters the lion’s den, all Hades breaks loose. Homeowners fear plummeting property values and rising crime.

It is irrelevant that Daniel is an “exceptional Negro” cut from the same cloth as Sidney Poitier’s screen incarnation (i.e. Poitier’s Dr. Prentice in Stanley Kramer’s 1967 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?). It’s just not enough for Daniel to be equal to the schlubs next door – to be allowed to live with them he has to be better than these Paleolithic palefaces. Daniel is a highly educated biochemist whose firm, Monsanto, has transferred him from Chicago to St. Louis, and a family man with the 30,000 requisite dollars for buying Jeff’s house.

Mimi Roth (Lenora May) is the neighborhood “buttinsky” who leads the charge of the white flight brigade against Bluestein’s selling to Black. Majority rule has a cruel twist as Daniel loses a community vote, with “nays” outnumbering “yeas.” Did the liberalism JFK embodied die with him in Dallas? What’s a developer to do?

You’ll have to see Black & Bluestein to find out. But the play deals, albeit in a humorous way, with serious social conflicts that, alas, are still with us; such as the wrangling over what Obama’s pastor sermonized and what Obama said about his white grandmother clearly demonstrate.

However, the playwright puts a singular spin on the dramedy’s ethnic politics: It’s not merely “whitey” or “The Man” -- as epitomized by Rod Steiger’s redneck sheriff in 1967’s In the Heat of the Night -- versus oppressed African Americans. In Black & Bluestein; it’s one long-suffering group – Jews – dealing with another, African Americans. Who’s more persecuted?

Jews, like blacks, know something about slavery and genocide. Thus during the Civil Rights era Jews played a prominent role in the movement. Jewish activists Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were -- along with the African American James Cheney -- murdered by bigots during 1964’s “Freedom Summer,” a year after Black & Bluestein takes place.

Many Jews, however, could “pass” for white Christians and get on the other side of the social barrier, and this story explores whether Jews should identify with the powers-that-be, or with the underprivileged. Just as the Obama race brought racial politics front and center again, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict places the traditional role of Jews vis-à-vis social struggles into the spotlight. Should those who had been oppressed but now have some privileges forget their onetime brethren, or continue to fight for equal rights for all?

Bluestein embodies this contradiction, as his conscience is torn by the decision he must make. His “bleeding heart” wife Susan (the perky Kelly Lester, who is married offstage to her onstage husband) makes his self-determination an even harder task.

The cast’s expert ensemble acting, skillfully directed by Second City alum Deborah Harmon, brings the dramatist’s words and message alive with verve. Often cast as a good girl, Lenora May, a veteran of stage and the big/little screens, ably plays against type as Black & Bluestein’s “villainess.”

Along these lines, Larry Gelman (Emmy-nominated for his work on the Barney Miller sitcom) as hard-put pharmacist Marvin Feldman votes against Daniel’s move into the all-white enclave. Feldman insists he’s no “bigot.”

Another TV-movie-theatre venerable vet, George Coe, plays Jeff’s uncle, Russian immigrant and shopkeeper Joe Grodsky, who will move if his nephew sells property to “schvartzes.” But when Daniel compares the KKK to those despised Cossacks, Joe sees things differently.

Bentley plays Daniel as someone with a long simmering seething soul he must somehow contain. Mastering rage, instead of losing control, is his strategy when confronting prejudice, his path to empowerment. Bentley’s characterization and lines present an African-American perspective. Although Black & Bluestein is written from a Jewish POV, you don’t have to be a chicken to know an egg.

Much of Daniel’s dialogue comes as long distance calls to wife Doris (Kimberly Arland, who will star in the movie Lady Samurai). She prods Daniel to fight the good fight. At one point, Arland breaks character to deliver a startlingly lovely rendition of an Irving Berlin song which – unlike his fellow Jew George Gershwin’s "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess -- I’d never heard. Suppertime is a haunting song about the lynching of a black father, whose family must dine without him. It’s surprising that the Tin Pan Alley composer of schmaltz such as "White Christmas" also penned a sensitive song about racism. Who knew?

The sparse space of set designer Scott Heineman’s interior of a suburban household subtly implies the shtetl many of these St. Louis Jews escaped from in the “Old Country,” only to live in another walled-off ghetto in the New World.

The canned music linking Black & Bluestein’s scenes refers to sitcoms such as M*A*S*H Mayer wrote after he abandoned the family’s Missouri building business for writing in Tinseltown. His musical Dietrich & Chevalier also plays at the same theatre Sundays, so audiences searching for social commentary as well as laughs can enjoy a Mayer double feature.

Black & Bluestein is at the Santa Monica Playhouse, 1211 4th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401 through May 4 on Saturdays at 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Info: (310) 459-1548.