Reviewed by:

• Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry
• Dana A. Williams

For every revival of a canonical play, an original script goes unproduced, and the urgent need to see meaningful dramatizations of the contemporary moment and its challenges on the stage goes unfulfilled. Such failures are antithetical to the function of theatre, which in no small part involves offering the audience an exploration of new ways to look at the world as it is being experienced in the present moment. Subtly guided by undetected didacticism about how we might best live through moments of crisis and change, we are supposed to leave the theatre both entertained and enriched—with our perceptions of the world and the human condition broadened.

As much as theatre has met this function over the years, few revivals were poised to meet the specific needs of the summer of 2020, which was plagued by the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial unrest. The uncontained spread of the virus made live performances impossible, while stay-at-home orders amid an extended moment of racial unrest heightened our need to hear from our bards. Programming from the “National Theatre at Home” initiative hit the right note in July with its stream of Lorraine Hansberry’s final play, Les Blancs, giving us one week of free access to a 2016 recording of the play as performed at the National Theatre in the UK. The performance, which starred Danny Sapani as Tshembe Matoseh, Gary Beadle as Abioseh Matoseh, and Tunji Kasim as Eric, was ably guided by South African director Yael Farber and originally broadcast by National Theatre Live to cinemas around the world. The stream to YouTube four years later offered timely commentary about racism, imperialism, and colonialism as the world reacted to public displays of police-sanctioned violence against Black bodies.

Les Blancs is set in the fictional African country of Ztembe and uses Tshembe’s return home to bury his father to explore the community’s rejection of the tyranny of colonialism once and for all. Tshembe has settled into his new life in England with his white wife and their biracial son, but the timing of his return home makes his involvement in the emerging revolution unavoidable. He is at once respectful and resentful of the rural mission that sits at the center of the community and the white people who run it, since they made his life as an intellectual possible, on the one hand, but also denied his country its independence on the other. He is similarly ambiguous about the revolt afoot—he understands its necessity but rejects his brother Eric’s beckoning to join the movement. Tshembe is disinterested, too, in his other brother Abioseh’s embrace of religion as a viable response to the colonial situation. What is clear—to Tshembe, the members of his community, and to the audience—is that there is no easy answer to the question of whether and when violence is an appropriate response to oppression.

The rebroadcast of the revival reminded those of us who watched just how much Les Blancs’s interrogation of the intersections of violence and racism transcends geographical boundaries. As one who was attentive to African independence movements in the 1960s, Hansberry knew that communities that teeter on the edge of civil war, in Africa and the United States alike, cannot escape racial reckoning after extended periods of white supremacist rule. Fifty years after its first production, Les Blancs is still disturbingly relevant, and Farber’s production of it was disturbingly beautiful.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the production was that no one aspect outshined the other. The play was unfinished at the time of Hansberry’s untimely death from cancer at the tender age of 34. In 1970, her former husband Robert Nemiroff completed the script and oversaw a month-long run of the play on Broadway (starring James Earl Jones as Tshembe). The 2016 National Theatre production had the benefit of that script and a revised one, completed collaboratively by Farber, Drew Lichtenberg as the play’s dramaturg, and Joi Gresham, the...

审核人：

• 洛林·汉斯伯里（Leor Blance Hansberry）的《Les Blancs》
• 达娜·威廉姆斯（Dana A.Williams）

对于经典剧本的每一次复兴，原始剧本都不会制作出来，迫切需要看到有意义的当代瞬间戏剧化及其在舞台上的挑战。这种失败与剧院的功能是对立的，剧院的功能在很大程度上涉及向观众提供探索世界的新方式，以了解当前正在经历的世界。在未发现的关于我们如何在危机和变化的时刻如何过上最好的生活的教条主义的巧妙指导下，我们应该离开剧院，不仅娱乐，而且丰富了我们对世界和人类状况的理解。

多年来，尽管剧院满足了这一职能，但几乎没有复兴能够满足2020年夏季的特殊需求，而这又受到了COVID-19的两次大流行和种族动荡的困扰。病毒的无止境传播使现场表演无法实现，而在种族动荡时间延长的情况下，在家待命令我们更加需要听取吟游诗人的消息。7月，洛林·汉斯伯里（Lorraine Hansberry）的最后一部戏《Les Blancs》中，来自“国家国家剧院”计划的节目引起了轰动，让我们有一周的时间可以免费观看2016年在英国国家剧院表演的那场演出的录音。该表演由南非导演Yael Farber出色地指导，最初由国家剧院直播向世界各地的电影播放。四年后，YouTube上的视频流提供了有关种族主义，帝国主义和殖民主义的及时评论，因为全世界对警察批准的针对黑人尸体的暴力行为的公开展示做出了反应。

莱斯·布朗斯它位于虚构的非洲国家Ztembe中，并使用Tshembe的返回家园埋葬他的父亲，一劳永逸地探索社区对殖民主义暴政的拒绝。Tshembe与白人妻子和混血儿一起在英国定居，但是回国的时机使他不可避免地卷入了这场新兴的革命。他一方面尊重并憎恨位于社区中心的乡村传教团，另一方面对经营它的白人感到不满，因为一方面，他们使他的生活成为知识分子，但也否认了他的国家独立于另一个。同样，他对正在进行的叛乱也含糊不清-他了解叛乱的必要性，但拒绝了哥哥埃里克（Eric）的招募。Tshembe也无私，他的另一个兄弟阿比约什（Abioseh）信奉宗教，以此作为对殖民局势的切实回应。对于Tshembe，其社区的成员以及听众来说，显而易见的是，对于暴力是否以及何时是对压迫的适当反应这一问题没有简单的答案。

复兴的重播让我们这些人回想起了莱斯·布朗斯对暴力和种族主义交集的审讯在多大程度上超越了地理界限。作为关注1960年代非洲独立运动的人，汉斯伯里知道在内战边缘摇摇欲坠的社区，无论是在非洲还是在美国，在白人至上主义统治时期延长之后，都无法逃脱种族歧视。首次生产五十年后，Les Blancs仍然令人担忧，而Farber的作品却令人震惊。

生产中最显着的方面也许是没有任何一个方面比另一个更出色。汉斯伯瑞（Hansberry）在34岁那年才因癌症过早去世时，这部戏还没有完结。1970年，她的前夫罗伯特·内米尔洛夫（Robert Nemiroff）完成了剧本，并监督了该剧在百老汇的长达一个月的演出（由詹姆斯·厄尔·琼斯主演詹姆斯·厄尔·琼斯饰演Tshembe） ）。2016年国家剧院的演出得益于该剧本和一部修订剧本，该剧本由法伯（Farber），德鲁·利希滕贝格（Drew Lichtenberg）作为剧集的戏剧演员，与乔伊·格雷沙姆（Joi Gresham）合作完成