Before she wrote it, Childress had acted for many years with the American Negro Theatre, and she distilled a decade of precise observations into her script, from the mid-century rise of actorly Method jargon to the exaggerated hierarchies of Equity snack breaks. Trouble in Mind is a sore-hearted farce, a realistic portrait of acting while Black, and (potentially) a crisp backstage comedy. But Charles Randolph-Wright’s production wavers in several crucial moments, and the show slows rather than sharpens as it comes to a close. The text still contains astonishing power it could have been written yesterday. Their Broadway production was scrapped.) The announcement puts us firmly in the play’s corner - my audience gave a little cheer - but it also focuses attention on the way those final beats should land like blows. (After the play’s 1955 premiere Off Broadway, white producers tried to force her to soften Trouble’s ending, and she said no. After welcoming us back to live performance, the voice welcomes Childress herself to Broadway, about six decades late. Just before the Roundabout revival of Alice Childress’s masterpiece Trouble in Mind begins, the preshow announcement offers us some context. Photo: Joan Marcus/(l to r): Brandon Micheal Hall (John Nevins), LaChanze (Wiletta Mayer), Chuck Cooper (Sheldon Forrester) in Roundabout Theatre Company’s Trouble in Mind. From Trouble in Mind, at the Roundabout’s American Airlines Theatre.
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