Posted by Faye Bell on February 21, 2007 at 22:50:46:

For those Hattie McDaniel fans who are always interested in anything relative to our "Mammy", a new play is now open off Broadway in New York. Since it closes March 4th, if you are in the New York area, you don't have much time left before the closing date.

The link shown below is a direct link to the New York Theatre.

Entitled: (MIS)UNDERSTANDING MAMMY: THE HATTIE McDANIEL STORY

VENUE: Theater Five

OPENED: February 10, 2007

CLOSES: March 4, 2007

PERFORMANCES: Wed, Sat at 2pm; Fri at 7pm; Sun at 5pm

TICKETS: $40.00
212-247-2429
Order tickets online

SPECIAL TICKET PRICES: Students: $20

CAST: Capathia Jenkins

AUTHOR: Joan Ross Sorkin

DIRECTOR: David Glenn Armstrong

MUSICAL SUPERVISOR: Lance Horne

PRODUCING COMPANY: Emerging Artists Theatre

This is from the press materials:
"(mis)Understanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story is a play with music that reveals a side of Hattie McDaniel’s life that few people knew. Hattie achieved stardom by becoming the first African American to win an Academy Award, but she paid a high price for fame. By playing a succession of maids and cooks, most notably Mammy in Gone With the Wind, she became the target of an unrelenting campaign against "Mammyism" led by Walter White of the NAACP, who thought her roles were shameful and degrading to their race. Despite her own efforts to bring dignity and humanity to her roles, within seven years of winning her Oscar, her film career was virtually destroyed. The play is set in 1952 at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodlands Hills, California, where Hattie is battling breast cancer. In her weakened state of mind, she imagines that Walter White has come to visit her and possibly reconcile their differences. For the first time Hattie directly confronts her most vocal critic to prove to him that she was in fact a credit to her race. In recounting her miraculous life story as the daughter of a slave who became a world-renowned movie star, Hattie proudly illuminates a life that was too often misunderstood."

Capathia Jenkins (Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me) stars. This is part of Emerging Artists Theatre's Triple Threat series.

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nytheatre.com review
Lisa Ferber · February 10, 2007

Seconds after Capathia Jenkins delivered her last line as Hattie McDaniel in Joan Ross Sorkin's (Mis)Understanding Mammy, people were rising to their feet to applaud her dedicated, honest, compassionate, respectful, and lovable portrayal of a woman whose greatest success also led to her greatest difficulty.

The premise of this play is Hattie McDaniel talking to an unseen, unheard Walter White, executive director of the NAACP, as she is in her hospital room in the 1950s, suffering from breast cancer. The show focuses on her defense of her Mammy role, but we also learn about her various failed marriages and burning desire to have a child.

Hattie McDaniel, like many black actresses in the first half of the last century, spent much of her career playing maids and cooks. She was the first black woman to win an Academy Award, for one of those roles, strong-willed Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Although Mammy was a character played with much dignity, McDaniel suffered at the hands of White, who staged protests outside theaters showing Gone with the Wind, his criticism reaching wide enough to result in a letter from a black soldier that McDaniel (in this show) claims hurt her more than any other public response.

This is a play with songs, and my one regret is that there aren't more of them, as Jenkins has the kind of rich, earnest, bluesy, life-affirming voice that makes a person want more. She sings a few partial songs and a few full ones, and each time those sounds fill the room, the audience is getting a treat.

Sorkin's script accomplishes the remarkable feat of conveying history without being didactic. From the start it's an unrealistic premise, where a person gets to finally tell off someone who has hounded them throughout life, so the whole thing could have come off like a lesson. And the beauty is it's anything but. The story remains interesting throughout, and Sorkin peppers the reminiscences with little jokes here and there to keep things from getting too heavy, in what is of course a serious situation.

We learn in this show how the actions of the NAACP in some ways had a negative effect on the careers of such actresses as McDaniel, in that toward the later 1940s, roles for black actors were on the decline as studios were less likely to write any roles that might draw criticism. (Of course, they could have just written regular-folk non-servant roles...but nobody asked me.)

Jenkins's performance conveys a wonderful humility and strength—she really is a one-woman show. She's blessed with a natural cuteness and playfulness, making her endearing as well as admirably strong. She is powerful and sincere and instantly likable. Something tells me more standing ovations are in store for this performer in this show and others.

• New York Theatre

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