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calarco 's review for:
Blues for Mister Charlie: A Play
by James Baldwin
Written in honor of the activist Medgar Evers and young Emmett Till, James Baldwin crafted a great play that still resonates to this day with Blues for Mister Charlie.
Taking place in a southern U.S. town, the stage of the play is split into Whitetown and Blacktown, where the audience can witness different perspectives and reactions from characters in response to the murder of young, black Richard who has just returned home from the North. His murder is cruel, and watching how an entire community gets gaslight and belittled for even seeking justice is heart-wrenching.
What is so great about this play is that Baldwin's protagonists are not pure martyrs, but real and complex characters. Parnell, the sympathetic white man who pushes for a trial against Lyel and longs to be just, still struggles with giving up his privilege as a white man. Richard's family and friends lie about Richard having owned a gun before the jury. Mind you, this gun played no role in the actual murder, but that and Richard's time in the North are key pieces of "evidence" in painting Richard as a dangerous man.
The ensuing court case is intense. Lyel, the murderer, is an undeniably contemptible individual, who forces his wife Jo to lie about Richard attempting to rape her. She also gives her husband a false alibi that contradicts her previous testimony. Ultimately, in a court what should matter are the material facts and witnesses related to a crime. Instead the court dissolves into a trial on the victim's character, even black character in general.
Rather than cross-examining obvious inconsistencies in Lyel's story, the prosecutor (with support from the judge) asks inherently prejudicial questions that belittle Richard, and the people who hope to defend his good name. The prosecution harps on Richard's past of substance abuse and time spent in the North with white women; moot arguments that have nothing to do with the facts.
This play was published in 1964, though I find it holds great relevance in 2018. Even today, whenever you see a young black man who has been killed on the news, almost immediately his character is put on trial. The victim is persecuted with greater severity than the (suspected) murderer. The reaction is still too eerily similar.
With that in mind, I would absolutely recommend this play. It's tough content that provides important food for thought.
Taking place in a southern U.S. town, the stage of the play is split into Whitetown and Blacktown, where the audience can witness different perspectives and reactions from characters in response to the murder of young, black Richard who has just returned home from the North. His murder is cruel, and watching how an entire community gets gaslight and belittled for even seeking justice is heart-wrenching.
What is so great about this play is that Baldwin's protagonists are not pure martyrs, but real and complex characters. Parnell, the sympathetic white man who pushes for a trial against Lyel and longs to be just, still struggles with giving up his privilege as a white man. Richard's family and friends lie about Richard having owned a gun before the jury. Mind you, this gun played no role in the actual murder, but that and Richard's time in the North are key pieces of "evidence" in painting Richard as a dangerous man.
The ensuing court case is intense. Lyel, the murderer, is an undeniably contemptible individual, who forces his wife Jo to lie about Richard attempting to rape her. She also gives her husband a false alibi that contradicts her previous testimony. Ultimately, in a court what should matter are the material facts and witnesses related to a crime. Instead the court dissolves into a trial on the victim's character, even black character in general.
Rather than cross-examining obvious inconsistencies in Lyel's story, the prosecutor (with support from the judge) asks inherently prejudicial questions that belittle Richard, and the people who hope to defend his good name. The prosecution harps on Richard's past of substance abuse and time spent in the North with white women; moot arguments that have nothing to do with the facts.
This play was published in 1964, though I find it holds great relevance in 2018. Even today, whenever you see a young black man who has been killed on the news, almost immediately his character is put on trial. The victim is persecuted with greater severity than the (suspected) murderer. The reaction is still too eerily similar.
With that in mind, I would absolutely recommend this play. It's tough content that provides important food for thought.