Black No More: A Skin Deep Musical Fantasy

A new “The New Group” production, Black No More, a musical adaptation of George S. Schuyler’s Afrofuturist 1931 Harlem Renaissance novel, has the feel of something special, theater that may go off the charts in the manner of Hamilton. Black No More opened this week at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

Featuring a stellar Broadway cast led by powerhouse Tony winning vocalist Lillias White, and Brandon Victor Dixon, of Hamilton and Jesus Christ Superstar fame, the show’s ensemble of excellent singers and dancers tell a tale of contrasts: the exciting free, artsy denizen of Harlem vs. the racist crackers of Atlanta and how they handle their black folk. Needless to say, whites do not fare well in this scenario, even as the fine performances by such actors as Theo Stockman as chief villain Ashby Givens beguile us with their villainy.

A young man (Dixon), after a night of flirtation with a white woman (Jennifer Damiano) in a Harlem club, is persuaded to follow a dream of pursuing her by taking advantage of the opportunity to become white. Against the protests of his friends—great work by Tamika Lawrence as Buni and Ephraim Sykes as Agamemnon, --he follows the science of Dr. Junius Crookman (Tariq Trotter) whose name says it all. To the credit of this production, the audience is moved to suspend disbelief. And Dixon takes on whiteness to a fault, changing his name from Max to Matthew. He follows his dream girl to Atlanta, and is so persuasive a speaker against black culture, he becomes a leader in the community, and marries his dream. Be ware what you wish for.

At a preview a few weeks ago, Tariq Trotter aka Black Thought, Dr. Crookman and principal showrunner with John Ridley who wrote the book for the musical said, he took his first meeting about writing the music and lyrics for Black No More on the very day he saw Hamilton at the Public Theater. The Roots’ MC further explained the work’s grounding in the history of American music—actually rap and hip hop, and his determination to explore Black experience. To that end, he never intended to play the role of Dr. Junius Crookman, a satiric figure determined to sell the science of making people of color white, but the actors who he imagined would play this strange figure—he named only one, the late Michael K. Williams, did not embrace “time,” as he called it—to the rest of us, it is called respecting a rehearsal schedule. But he does not condemn: he knows lots of people like that, he said. And whenever we encounter the work again, it is bound to have changed.