[Sidney Poet Heroical is] a slick, semi-musical satire of Sidney Poitier. In fact, Baraka's play attacks all blacks who "make it big" in white society, forget their roots, and begin to think, talk, and live "white." Much of Baraka's characterization is funny and effective: his portrait of Sidney's egotistical, ruthless buddy and mentor who prances across the stage in knee-high boots, skin-tight pants, and shirts invariably open to subnavel levels, and his white she-devils in glittery make-up, women propelled by extravagant sexual and economic tastes, are clever exaggerations of America's fortune-hunters and culture vultures.

But Sidney Poet Heroical … overworks the contrast between the bizarre, surrealistic white world and the more realistic scenes from black life. The down-to-earth black chorus that chides Sidney, warning him not to sell out, becomes predictable and tedious. So does the dizzy white nymphomaniac, who continually shinnies up poor Sidney as if he were...