An artfully professional new repertory group has now joined the U.S. theater: the Negro Ensemble Company. Supple in motion, stoic in grief, satiric in temper, the all-Negro cast (five men, four women) turns Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, an atrabilious Peter Weiss tract on the evils of Portuguese colonialism, into a mimetic dance of pain, fury, death and anticipatory joy. For a troupe in its infancy, opening night at Manhattan's St. Mark's Playhouse off Broadway marked a large stride toward the dream of Co-Founder Robert Hooks (Hallelujah, Baby!): "If in ten...
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