Theater For the New City presents ‘Ella The Ungovernable’ through July 7

Amsterdam News has been reporting the news of the day from a Black perspective for 113 years. Donors who choose to give monthly or annually will receive Amsterdam News’ Weekly E-Edition and acclaimed weekday newsletter Editorially Black to their inbox!Christian Neal as Ella Fitzgerald singing"A Tisket A Tasket" at Amateur Night at the Apollo. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.

The fact that the author of this play is a white male presents yet another set of problems: being able to get into the mindset of characters who are Black and female, which requires a double leap of the imagination. Hence I continued to view this play with a jaundiced eye. However, as the play unfolded, my doubts began to gradually dry up like a raisin in the sun; the playwright David McDonald proved well up to the task.

The place is infested with treacherous inmates and corrupt sadistic white guards, both of whom are prone to sudden acts of violence at the slightest infraction of the written rules of the administration and the unwritten rules imposed by the inmates. She describes it as a hell hole where “nobody is to be trusted,” which left Ella, convincingly played by Christian Neal, bewildered and somewhat paranoid.

Employing this technique, we are provided cameos of scenes from Ella’s past. We see her come up from Virginia to live in Harlem with her mom; We see her mom seduced by a handsome Latin Lothario of Portuguese extraction; we see her mother suddenly killed by a hit-and-run driver. Not knowing where her father is, she is left to live with her mother’s Portuguese lover, who tries to sexually molest her but is unsuccessful because she smashes him in the head with an iron.

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