THE MEETING
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From time to time, King’s and Malcolm X’s words transcend the play, and it’s hard not to be stirred by the sight of them among us once again. It is even possible, for a few seconds, to forget you are watching a play, and believe instead you are watching a film clip, an effect that in itself can be quite moving. Some members of the mostly black audience were so caught up by the dialogue (or the material struck such a chord) that they shouted responses back to the stage–sometimes before the actor finished his line.
As often as not, however, the play flounders around in its own preposterous setup. The very idea that Malcolm X would arrange a meeting with Martin Luther King, a man he considered a virtual collaborator with the white oppressors, is hard to swallow. True, Malcolm returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964 calmer and more accepting of King’s ways, and willing to acknowledge that not all white men were “devils.” But Malcolm was also a very complicated and deeply suspicious man. Hardly the sort of person to warm up to a political rival in a single evening. (It took months and months for Alex Haley to gain Malcolm X’s trust, when he was helping Malcolm write his autobiography.)
