Playwright: Charles Smith
At: Victory Gardens Theatre,
Phone: (773) 871-3000; $22-$35
Runs through: Feb. 29
The objective in Charles Smith's play is an education. Not just the three R's, but Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Science—in short, the state-of-the-art course of study in 1828 America. John Newton Templeton, born to slavery and emancipated at an early age, wants it. The Reverend Robert Wilson thinks Templeton should have it and is prepared to sponsor him at Ohio University. Wilson's wife also wants it, but cannot have it.
Smith's argument, however, is the elusive question of education vs. indoctrination, and the tendency of self-interest to attach itself, unnoticed even by its perpetrators, to the loftiest of goals. And it is this underlying agenda that makes Free Man Of Color more than another Famous First pageant. To be sure, Templeton faces the expected trials confronting groundbreakers, but more insidious is his slow discovery of the task for which he is being groomed by his benefactors. Once he becomes aware of the deception being foisted on him—dishonesty hinted at by his hostess' curious hostility—and the compromises he will ultimately face, his indecision is that of all who would accept the largess, but not the prejudices, of the rich and powerful.
This is an abundance of brain exercise to pack into a single evening. However elegant and articulate Smith's text, the task of conveying its complexities falls to director Andrea J. Dymond and a trio of actors experienced at converting oratory into vernacular without losing a fraction of its eloquence. As the Rev. Wilson, Gary Houston captures the tunnel-vision of a fundamentally principled man unwilling to examine the flaws in his practices. Anthony Fleming III portrays Templeton with a dignity initially indicative of diffidence but gradually warming into defiant pride.
But it is Shelley Delaney's Jane Wilson who serves to remind us of rights denied allegedly 'privileged' citizens by a society proclaiming—with complete conviction—freedom for all. Five years later, another Ohio school, Oberlin College, would be the first to admit women, but one doubts that Mrs. Wilson's husband would as readily approve her enrollment thereat as he would that of a man, whatever the latter's ethnicity. The wheels of justice turn selectively, as well as slowly.