Steven Suskin - Offstage Observations: Inside Tales of the Not-So-Legitimate Theatre

Sometimes you can immediately tell from the ad just how good a musical will be. Or not. Purlie (1970).

Purlie I wanted to see. I had, several years earlier, stumbled across an obscure 1963 film called Gone Are the Days! These things would show up on TV, often late at night; without videotapes or video recorders, you had to watch em when they were broadcast. Gone Are the Days! was a wickedly funny, if uneven, satire on race relations. I relished the humor as Ossie Davis battled the bigoted Ol Capn for his inheritance, the traditions of the Ol South crumbling around them. I learned from the opening titles that this was derived from a play, which turned out to be Daviss own Purlie Victorious.

Back in junior high school days, I whiled away boring classroom hours reading playscripts that I got out of the nearby well-stocked public library. After seeing the film, I quickly devoured Purlie Victorious. I could understand why the play had been a quick failure; Broadway audiences of 1961 and film audiences of 1963 werent much interested in social satire, at least when the good and wise and clever characters were Black and the villain was a bumblingly doddering white patriarchwho, in retrospect, was likely patterned on some still-sitting US senator or other.

Broadway audiences of 1970 werent likely to be interested, either; but here was a musical version of Purlie Victorious, coauthored by Davis with songwriters from the pop world and a cast of unknowns. Davis collaborated on the book but didnt star in the musical; they had a young actor named Cleavon Little, who turned out to be exceptionally good. By virtue of which he became the first Black actor to win the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musicaljust a year after James Earl Jones won the nonmusical equivalentand the first virtually unknown actor to win the award.

The box office at the Broadway Theatre had two or three people waiting, which is to say no line whatsoever. I considered the choices. Preview prices, at the time, were lower than the post-opening scale. I had already learned that if you asked for a balcony seat and the house wasnt full, a sympathetic treasurer sometimes had the latitude and inclination to move you down. (This was before the arrival of the half-price TKTS booth in 1973, which is built upon just this sort of discounting.)

I asked if I bought a $2.50 ticket way upstairs, might it be possible to get a slightly better seat?

The matinee was filled with groups, was the reply. But that night at 8:30, the final preview, he could move me down. To the third row of the orchestra; the major critics were coming, and the producer wanted to fill in the front. Itll be much better from the orchestra, added the treasurer, who clearly loved what hed seen of the show. They just put in a new song last night. Its great.

Going to the evening show meant Id have to take a late train home, arriving past midnight; but a front orchestra seat for the final preview of Purlie for $2.50? Of course!