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The Black Emperor of Broadway
USA 2020
produced by Arthur Egeli for Egeli Productions
directed by Arthur Egeli
starring Shaun Parkes, John Hensley, Nija Okoro, Nick Moran, Liza Weil, Lonnie Farmer, Nicholas Dorr, Eve Annenberg, Heather Egeli, Alexandra Foucard, Daniel Washington, Sarah MacDonnell, Tim Misuradze, John Clayton, Stuard Derrick, Ian Bowater, Christina Egeli, Will Oxtoby, Michael James Dreyer, Adrienne Earle Pender, Seneeca Wilson, Chev Hardy, Kayleigh Brown, Janey David, Fred Biddle, Leslie Lobell, Bryce Egeli, Paul Hickey, Roger A. Chauvette, James Little, Dave Loving, Tim Costigan, Anna McEntee, Issa Coulibaly, Charles Daniel, Larry Mahan
screenplay by Ian Bowater, based on the play by Jason Solowsky, based on the lives of Charles S. Gilpin & Eugene O'Neill, music by Adrienne Earle Pender
Emperor Jones
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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Charles S. Gilpin (Shaun Parkes) is an actor with a passion, and heaps
of talent to go with it - but he's also black, which means he had to
whither away playing minstrel shows for years, never really being able to
accept their demeaning content. So by the 1910s he said no more and
settled down in New York in an attempt to getting onto some of the local
stages, the goal of course being Broadway - something unheard of back
when. But he works his way up steadily, and eventually playing Reverend
William Curtis in a 1919 play about Abraham Lincoln gets him his first
mainstream acclaim. However, when that way closes it's back for Gilpin to
menial jobs ... It's 1920, and recent Pullitzer Prize laureat Eugene
O'Neill's (John Hensley) company casts his play Emperor Jones for a
Broadway run - and to the dismay of everyone on the company, O'Neill
insists on a black man in the lead role instead of the then customary
white man in blackface - and after being turned down by Paul Robeson
(Daniel Washington), another popular actor of the era (in the film, in
fact Robeson didn't staret out until a little later), O'Neill decides on
Gilpin. Gilpin is happy to accept the role, but is opposed to the constant
use of the n-word in O'Neill's play, insisting black people don't use it
talking to each other, while O'Neill takes the educated white man position
of knowing better because he says so, and insists on Gilpin sticking to
his script verbatim. Gilpin does for the premiere, and he as well as the
play get rave reviews. But since the praise for his performance outweighs
the praise for the writing, he makes the role more and more his in future
performances, abolishes the n-word more and more - much to the dismay of
O'Neill, who sneaks into performances every now and again. This conflict
doesn't reast easy on either man, and while Gilpin starts drinking more
and more to compensate for the lack of approval from O'Neill, which
eventually leads to his wife (Nija Okoro) leaving him, O'Neill starts to
actively looking for a replacement, to the disapproval of some of his
stock company members, and eventually when the play's picked up by a
bigger theatre, Gilpin is dropped ... Now if you, like me,
aren't really into theatre and know little of its history, this story from
a hundred years has probably passed you by so far ... and yet it's a
groundbreaking and also poignant one - maybe even more so today than back
when. However, this is not a film that preaches, and it does a great job
to dramatize its plot in a way that speaks to a general audience, much
more through its subtlety than any spectacle. And Shaun Parkes does a
great job carrying the film supported by a very able and relatable
ensemble, making this a pretty cool movie.
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