Grantham Coleman in Classic Stage Company’s Wine in the Wilderness. Photo: Marc J. Franklin
Who defines the identity of a Black American woman in 1964?
That’s the provocative question that drives Wine in the Wilderness, Alice Childress’s neglected 1969 play that is receiving a spirited and welcome revival at the Classic Stage Company this month.
For the first half of the play, the answer to that question is: the Black man. Painter Bill Jameson (Grantham Coleman) is sequestered in his apartment on a hot summer evening in 1964, oblivious to the gunshots, screams, and sirens of the Harlem riots raging all around him. His mind is elsewhere, consumed with the task of painting a triptych entitled Wine in the Wilderness, representing Black Womanhood, as he describes the project to his friend Oldtimer (Milton Craig Nealy), who has unexpectedly dropped by carrying a bag of loot he’s scored from the rioting streets.
The first painting of the triptych, as Bill explains, features an idealized image of a young girl. The second is also an idealized image—that of a stately, beautiful woman. As he describes it, she represents “Mother Africa, regal Black womanhood in her noblest form.” The third is a blank canvas, upon which he intends to paint “a messed-up chick—a Black woman who is ignorant, unfeminine, coarse, rude, vulgar.” When asked to clarify his intent with that third image, Bill proclaims a noble purpose: to show “what society has made out of our women… a poor, dumb chick that’s had her behind kicked until it’s numb.”
Then the doorbell rings and Bill’s attractive, upscale neighbors appear, Sonny-man (Brooks Brantly) and his wife, Cynthia (Lakisha May). They announce that they’ve brought Bill the ideal model for that third painting—a young woman named Tommy (Olivia Washington), whom they met at a bar on that riot-ridden night.
From the moment that Tommy enters, she claims the stage with her charisma. Vibrant, flamboyant, and garrulous, wearing colorfully mismatched clothes and a flashy blond wig, she’s a factory worker who presents a startling contrast to the three college graduates (Bill, Sonny, and Cynthia) who surround her. She’s in high spirits, even though the rioters have just burned down her apartment and she’s effectively homeless. It takes only a few minutes for Bill to agree that she’s the ideal subject for his third painting. Tommy, who is immediately attracted to this handsome, established artist, accepts—provided she’s given a take-out dinner first from a neighboring Chinese restaurant.
What follows thereafter is the development of an intense artist/subject relationship during that super-charged night. The Chinese restaurant has burned down during the riot, too, so all Bill can offer is a paper bag containing a hot dog and an orange soda. Reacting to Tommy’s disappointment, he offers a patronizing remark about how demanding Black woman are.
And from that moment, tension begins to brew, along with mutual physical attraction. Bill attests that he wants to paint “Black is beautiful” but at the same time finds Black women difficult. They always want to have the last word, he says; they always want to “latch on” to men. Instead, he insists, they should be grateful for what they have.
Bill’s blatant chauvinism and condescension escalate until Tommy makes a dramatic transformation. Symbolically, it occurs when she removes her wig and dons a multicolored robe Bill has given her, morphing into an image of beauty and strength. She launches a confrontation between “educated you vs uneducated me,” as she puts it, talking truth about the struggle a Black woman has in that era to establish her identity. She overwhelms him with newfound confidence and strength, using the “n—–” word as a form of empowerment in contrast to his “Afro-American” vocabulary. “I can be the wine in the wilderness,” she declares. Indeed, she personifies her true given name (“Tomorrow”) as the empowered Black woman of the future.
Such a dramatic character transformation is a tall order for a ninety-minute play, and Olivia Washington meets the challenge triumphantly. The intimacy of Classic Stage’s three-quarters-in-the round space augments the powerful performances by this able ensemble. Arnulfo Maldonado’s atmospheric set depicts Bill’s studio, colorfully detailed and surrounded by his paintings hung on the CSC’s brick walls. With the sounds (by Bill Toles) of the Harlem riots outside, punctuated by thunder of another kind at the end, we feel the moment of history keenly.
Resurrecting the role of Tommy—especially with Washington’s electrifying performance—is a gift to today’s audience in understanding the evolution of the Black woman in American history. Looking back on other memorable portrayals of Black women set in the previous decade—Lena Younger (Mama) in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun or Rose Maxson in August Wilson’s Fences—Tommy is the evolving Black “Tomorrow Woman” of the 1960s, changing and transforming, personifying the emerging Black Power that the era fought for.
This stellar cast is directed by LaChanze, an actress who played a leading role in Alice Childress’s earlier play Trouble in Mind at the Roundabout in 2021, featuring another Black woman taking agency. We’re grateful to Classic Stage Company for calling our attention to the legacy of this underrecognized Black playwright in the American theatre. Wine in the Wilderness, a play about class, gender, and a crucial period in Black American history, takes us back in time so we can better understand our own.