Joseph Walker's The Harangues … is another example of impassioned black theatre which is interesting only because it is impassioned…. The first of the evening's harangues (there are two, which are emblematically pictorial and hymnal) is a short melodrama in which a young Negro plots the murder of his prospective white (Texan) millionaire father-in-law and is himself mowed down by the man (actually a Harlem Italian) and several of his black henchmen.
In the second harangue, Asura, a black street "prophet," threatens to kill two "unworthy" blacks and two whites (one of the latter pair, a girl, is eventually spared because Asura comes to find that she has human "value"). Asura too is killed by one of the blacks. The play is somewhat baffling until the final point is made. Walker writes with an articulate vigor…. The author is not a "racist"; he condemns humankind as a whole for its stupidity, cruelty, insane betrayal of good faith. The last sentence of the play, in which the dying Asura spits out his contempt in a telling obscenity, struck me as universally justified when we reach the mood of despairing disgust over our perpetually foul savagery. (pp. 124-25)
Harold Clurman, "Theatre: 'The Harangues'," in The Nation (copyright 1970 The Nation magazine, The Nation Associates, Inc.), Vol. 210, No. 4, February 2, 1970, pp. 124-25.
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