Mule Bone | The Learned Laddies or the Imagery Invalid
In this excerpt, Simon reviews the debut
production of Hurston and Hughes’s play, finding it
worthwhile theatrical entertainment. While the critic
calls the source material ‘‘skimpy,’’ he nevertheless
praises the presentation, stating ‘‘it was worth
waiting 60 years for so accomplished a production
to reach the stage.’’
Mule Bone was to have been the play (suggested at a 1930 party by Theresa Helburn to Langston Hughes) that would be neither heavy social drama nor minstrel show but a real comedy of black life that would extend the Harlem Renaissance to the stage. Hughes enlisted Zora Neale Hurston and they started converting her brief folktale ‘‘The Bone of Contention’’ into the three-act Mule Bone. It was never quite finished because, under various inner and outer pressures, the co-authors quarreled, for reasons...
[The entire page is 865 words long]
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