The fireworks flew fast and furious at Cambridge on February 18, 1965 as the actual proposition the two literary titans debated was: “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”
DEBATE: BALDWIN VS. BUCKLEY: Theater Review
This is the centennial of the birth of novelist/playwright/essayist/polemicist James Baldwin, and Angeleno theatergoers can commemorate the man who wrote Go Tell It on the Mountain and The Fire Next Time by seeing a couple of plays depicting Baldwin, including Larry Muhammad’s Last Night at Mikell’s, being presented by The Robey Theatre Company through May 11 at Downtown Los Angeles’ LATC. Another choice is Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley, which unlike the fictional Mikell’s, is a fact-based docu-play, like Stephen Sachs’ 2024 Fatherland about a January 6 rioter. In Debate, Christopher McElroen has adapted for the American vicarious the transcript of the actual 1965 live interchange at England’s Cambridge Union between Baldwin and the rightwing’s idiot savant.
No, I don’t mean Elon Muskrat – rather it’s William F. Buckley, the National Review editor and TV host of PBS’ Firing Line series, who tossed around $10 words intended to make this hifalutin arch-reactionary sound “intellectual,” while in reality Buckley was just a dimwitted racist who “opposed every milestone achievement of the civil rights movement. He denounced the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education when it was handed down, opposed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and belittled the 1964 Civil Rights Act.” I’d quip that Buckley had “one of the finest minds of the 18th century,” but in fact, in a 1970s Playboy interview, the so-called “patriot” admitted that in 1776, he would have sided with the British crown against the American revolutionaries.
The fireworks flew fast and furious at Cambridge on February 18, 1965 as the actual proposition the two literary titans debated was: “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?” Sixty years later, the sparks fly across the stage as Teagle F. Bougere and Eric T. Miller reenact the historical (and hysterical) real life discourse, made all the more compelling by seating the audience onstage at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center, instead of in the venue’s actual rows of seats. A big screen on the stage has black and white clips of the original debate, skillfully intercut with the live cast of thesps, which also includes Cole Wagner and Frankie Zabilka as the debate’s proposer and opposer of the question on the floor.
Although there may be a parry thrust to their exchange, the two debaters do not duel back and forth per se. Instead, they presented their answers to the proposition onetime each, and one at the time. Following the proposer and opposer, Baldwin took the floor first and launched into an impassioned account of race and racism in America and beyond. Within three days of the debate (Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965), Baldwin arguably became the leading African American intellectual, and his brilliant articulation of the condition of Blacks in the USA was the state of the art then. Bougere vividly brings Baldwin alive, seething with the torments inflicted upon him and millions of others due to the injustices of white supremacy. As depicted, the writer can barely restrain his rage and outrage; he almost jumps out of his own skin. But crowned by a majestic way with words, the brilliance of Bougere’s Baldwin empowers him to joust using his logic and language in front of what likely was an overwhelmingly white audience at Cambridge.
Literally outfitted in a tuxedo with a black bowtie, Miller plays the know-it-all, snarky Buckley as the man you love to hate. Like his counterpart, Miller has heaps of stage and screen credits, and this depth of acting experience shows, in both actors’ elocution and mannerisms. The performance – or, perhaps, reenactment – of this docudrama, based on a real-life event, with dialogue adapted directly from the transcripts, hews closely to the original (which you can watch on C-SPAN) and is compelling throughout.
Both actors acquit themselves admirably, master debaters who convincingly portray the historical characters they fully embody. The actual result of the debate is announced onstage, but in order to avoid divulging a plot spoiler, allow me to just add that in reality, against all odds, Buckley was absolutely certain he had won the contest – because, you know, a white man could never lose to what, as Baldwin put it, “I am not your…”, which the author said on The Dick Cavett Showin 1968.
Adapter/director Christopher McElroen nimbly helms his ensemble. [NOTE: PLOT SPOILER ALERT:] But then, after the outcome of the Cambridge debate is announced, McElroen agilely pulls a rabbit out of his theatrical hat, and the one-act play suddenly has a second act, as McElroen invites members of the audience to debate what they have just seen, 60 years after the historic event took place. Except unlike at Cambridge, the ticket buyers at the Nate Holden were overwhelmingly Black. It was a great plot twist with lots of intelligent and emotional feedback from the aud because, as that world famous philosopher Jimmy Durante once said: “Everybody wants to get into the act!”
Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley is for theatergoers interested in: Racial issues; Baldwin fans; Buckley acolytes; history; powerful dialogue; docu-plays; debates; and but of course, for all those who just love great acting!
Ebony Repertory Theatre, in association with the American vicarious, presents the West Coast premiere of Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley through May 11 on Friday at 8:00 p.m., Saturday at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. and Sunday at 3:00 p.m. at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center, 4718 West Washington Blvd. Los Angeles 90016. For tickets, go here. For more info to here.
Ed Rampell’s novel about the Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement for Indigenous rights, The Disinherited: Blood Blalahs, is being published this Spring. For info and to pre-order see: https://www.intpubnyc.com/browse/the-disinherited-blood-blalahs/.
