If any single criticism were to be leveled against Joseph Walker's The River Niger … it might be that it contains too much. But that is a good fault—one that in this case is both an aspect of the play's exuberance and integral to its purpose. The River Niger depicts the morass of Harlem; it heaps together vitality, corruption, agony, aspiration, violence and a will to transcendence. No salient trait predominates, except ferment, a ferment of existence struggling confusedly and valiantly to transfigure itself into coherence. The play's statement is humorous, lyric, virile, crude, and oddly inspiring….

[The] play is somewhat untidy in construction and spills over into melodrama. These are blemishes, but they do not impair the pulse of truth and human energy that keep the play constantly engaging. Through its rough naturalism there runs a vein of authentic poetry of feeling and speech. The play has...