The Theater: New Play in Harlem

Anna Lucasta (by Philip Yordan; adapted by Harry Wagstaff Gribble and Abram Hill; produced by the American Negro Theater). The night was sweltering. The "theater" was an oven of a public-library basement. The seats were hard camp chairs. The company was a small, experimental, rehearse-after-work group. The play itself was billed as the one about the prostitute who attempts to go straight. It looked as if the audience and actors alike were in for an awful beating.

The curtain rose on the prologue—the girl's family coming to a crummy Brooklyn bar for clues of her whereabouts. The audience ceased squirming. The story...

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