John Guare's A Free Man of Color, an epic historical deconstruction taking place at the time of The Louisiana Purchase, has a brilliant set design by David Rockwell and wonderful costumes, beautifully constructed, with a stylized historicity and intricate specificity, by Ann Hould-Ward, with superb lighting by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer. It is well visualized but poorly directed by George C. Wolfe: the movement patterns are clean and clear, the pageantry vivid; all the acting, except for a few, is over-the-top performance.
The four sins in acting are: growling, singing lines, popping plosives and sounding the in-breath. Most of these poor misguided cast members are unrestrained (or probably encouraged) by the director, and the awful acting is disturbing, and, in fact, repellant. Jeffrey Wright, the lead, is the worst, and his long monologue in Act One, all on one level, is so boring, I almost nodded out in spite of the level of noise pouring from his mouth.
Guare's play seems to be rather amusing in its clever anachronisms, and I'd love to read it, but my companion and I found the manner of acting in this production so repulsive, we left at intermission.
