The African Company Presents Richard III

a play by Carlyle Brown

reviewed by Laura V. Blanchard

The Historical Background

In the early nineteenth century a retired steamship steward, William Henry Brown, fitted up a tea garden in the back of his house in Lower Manhattan and called it the African Grove. It served a variety of refreshments and provided vocal and instrumental entertainment in the evenings. One of the chief artistes of the establishment, James Hewlett, gradually introduced dramatic events as well, and from this developed the African Company, the first African American theatrical company. The company announced, on September 21, 1821, a performance of Shakespeare's Richard III, which would take place in the upper apartment of the African Grove.

Considerably more than a "dapper waiter," Hewlett was described in a December 22, 1825 article in The Star: ":His histrionic education took place under those celebrated masters [George Frederick] Cooke and Cooper, whom he followed as a servant boy and stole their actions and attitudes. Hewlett, however, must have had a natural talent for theatrical performances, and an excellent voice, or he could never have surmounted his early difficulties." Probably building on this account, Carlyle Brown credits Hewlett with having at one time been Cooke's dresser. On the other hand, Cooke performed barely one season in New York, opening in November 1810, dying in September 1811, and touring the country in the interval. "There would not have much time," observes Dartmouth College emeritus professor Errol Hill, "for Hewlett to have worked as [Cooke's] dresser," adding that Hewlett surely observed Cooke in performance and was able to imitate him along with other notable actors. As for being a waiter, Hill notes that Hewlett signed one letter as "Chief Performer at the African Theatre, Tailor and Coat-Scourer." Hewlett also served as role model and inspiration for a younger member of the African Company, Ira Aldridge, who was to go on to a successful career and great critical acclaim as a tragedian in Europe, receiving honors including Prussia's highest medal and a knighthood from Saxony.

As the African Company readied its Richard III, the Park Theatre, the premier theater in New York, was about to reopen after a disastrous fire. It manager, Stephen Price, had begun to import leading actors from England and created the "star system" on Broadway. His vigorous responses to competitive productions included leasing a rival theater for a full year to keep it shut down and invoking specious fire-code violations to close competing productions. Park's plan for his grand reopening included the importation of the great English tragedian Junius Brutus Booth--in Richard III.

African Company productions had proven to be a popular diversion with white audiences who, according to one reviewer, were "generally of a riotous character, and amused themselves by throwing crackers on the stage, and cracking their jokes with the actors." Although the early performances ended peaceably, the actors playing Richard and Catesby were arrested by police for reasons that remain a mystery. On October 1 the company moved to a new locale at Mercer and Bleecker streets, where they were again forced to close down.

Writing in the playbill for the Arena Stage production of Brown's play, Hill points to a combined motivation of greed and politics for the crackdown. "In a manuscript written by theater historian Samuel Hay and currently awaiting publication, Hay explains that the attempt to shut down the African Company was politically motivated. The question was whether African Americans owning or renting property should be allowed to vote. New York sheriff Mordecai Noah, a pro-slavery Tammany Hall Democrat, was against voting rights for blacks who were affiliated with the forward-looking Federalist party. As editor of the powerful National Advocate newspaper he printed derisive reviews of African Company performances to show that blacks were incapable of attaining the higher arts. He also wrote plays that Stephen Price produced."

Writing in The New York Times, critic David Richards describes the play as "a rambling but often fast-moving drama" whose lead character offers, according to Richards, an eloquent explanation of why actors act: "I get to be loved and accepted. To be openly admired. To feel myself, to be full of myself. To breathe air and give it back again. To make myself as if I were clay.... The makeup, the costumes, and the robe. It's all glass that I know how to polish and make clear. So that any man can see that I am any man."

In what is one of the most compelling scenes of the play, Hewlett and Ann Johnson are rehearsing the scene in Richard III where Richard seduces Lady Anne over the open casket of her father-in-law, one of his victims. By the end of the scene, Lady Anne agrees to marry Richard. Johnson balks: "Ain't no truth in there for me," she complains, and doesn't feel she can act it. Philadelphia City Paper reviewer Toby Zinman explains: "As they rehearse [Jewett] reminds Ann about the theatricality of their status as free blacks...about the rage they each must suppress when faced with their economic and sexual oppressors...and about the actor's freedom to transcend social categories. Ann ultimately uses these tools -- plus the fact that she really is in love with her on-stage partner -- to find her way...into her role." In another chillingly effective scene, Hewlett recalls a performance at which his white audience interrupted his recitation of a Shakespearean soliloquy with increasingly strident demands that he sing "Possum Up a Gum Tree" instead.

The playwright's narrative moves briskly through the developing romance between Hewlett and Johnson, Price's offer to buy out the production, William Brown's defiant refusal, the fears of the cast as they prepare for opening night, the triumphant beginning of the performance punctuated by the arrival of the constabulary, and the promise of renewal in a Manhattan jail cell. As Hewlett, Brown, and Papa Shakespeare (a Caribbean griot who speaks disparagingly of his role as Catesby, "a tiresome little man, always running other people's errands") ponder the court's demand that they agree not to produce any more Shakespeare, William Brown produces his own script. It is The Drama of King Shotaway, based on the 1796 uprising of black Caribs against the English navy and thought to be the first work by an African-American playwright to be performed in the United States -- by the African Company in 1823. Philadelphia Weekly drama critic Elizabeth Finkler comments, "The final scene of The African Company Presents includes a speech from that drama -- a scrap of rhetoric full of rolling thunder. Might be interesting to revive that one."

This account is based primarily upon materials provided in the press kit for the Philadelphia premiere of the play, some of which are undated. The play apparently had its world premiere in Minneapolis, followed by a production at Washington DC's Arena Stage. Directed by Tazewell Thompson, the Arena cast included Leon Addison Brown as Hewlett, Gail Grate as Ann Johnson, Jonathan Earl Peck as William Brown, Wendell Wright as Papa Shakespeare, and LaDonna Mabry as Sarah.

In Philadelphia, the play was produced by Venture Theatre under the direction of H. German Wilson with Paul Bernardo as Stephen Price, Leslye G. Mogford as Sarah, Tina Tyler as Ann Johnson, Robert Christophe as James Hewlett, Robert Anu Hubbard as Papa Shakespeare, Frantz T. Excellent as William Henry Brown, Thomas Reiff as Constable-Man, and Frank Gilligan as Member of the Constabulary.

Sources for this document include the author's recollections of the Philadelphia production; the playbill for the Philadelphia production, including an extensive history of African American Shakespearean performers by production dramaturg Eva Marie Tremoglie; &Ladies and Gentlemen, Tonight's Performance: The African Company," by Errol Hill (article commissioned by the National Endowment for the Humanities and published in the Arena Stage program); personal correspondence from Errol Hill, December 2, 1993; undated review by David Richards from the "quot;Sunday View"' section of The New York Times, "When Shakespeare Wasn't for Everyone;" Elizabeth Finkler, "From Shakespeare in the 1800s to St. Mathew in the 1970s," Philadelphia Weekly, October 27, 1993; and Toby Zinman, "Talking Business," Philadelphia City Paper, October 29, 1993. Additional information on the play or any of the productions would be welcomed. The quotation from The Star was provided by Professor Hill, who notes that it is quoted more fully on page 38 of Marshall and Stock's biography of Ira Aldridge.

Those interested in further information on African American theater history are referred to Professor Hill's Shakespeare in Sable: A History of Black Shakespearean Actors, still available in paperback.

Carlyle Brown's plays include The African Company Presents "Richard III," produced by Arena Stage, Washington DC; and The Little Tommy Parker Celebrated Colored Minstrel Show, produced off-broadway by the Negro Ensemble Company, nominated for six Audelco Awards, and published by Dramatists Play Service. He has performed his original one-man show, Sea Never Dry, at the Arizona Theatre Company. His play Buffalo Hair was developed at the Minneapolis MN Playwrights' Center's 1992 PlayLabs conference, and premiered at Penumbra Theatre Company in the fall of 1993 where his plays, Little Tommy Parker and The African Company were past Cornerstone Prize-winners. Another work, Yellow Moon Rising, was developed under his direction with students from the graduate acting program at New York University's Tisch School for the Arts. He has received commissions from the New York Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage for The Blue Nail, and the 3M Company for George Washington Carver and the Jessup Demonstration Wagon. Awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Creative Artist Public Service Awards. He is the founding artistic director of The Laughing Mirror Theatre, an experimental ensemble company devoted to the research and development of Black American theatrical forms. (Source: Playwrights' Center News and Events Calendar, May-June 1993.)

Laura Blanchard is Vice Chair of the American Branch of the Richard III Society and executive director of the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries.