Les Blancs

Oakland Theater Project's Gender Bending Take on Lorraine Hansberry

By: Victor Cordell - Jul 16, 2025

The longest running Off-Broadway show in 1968-9 was Lorraine Hansberry’s autobiographical To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, drawn from her unpublished writings (It was the very first real play this reviewer ever saw – on a day pass from U.S. Army Basic Training at Fort Dix, New Jersey). Tragically, Hansberry never lived beyond young, having already died from pancreatic cancer at age 34.  After her death, the papers were adapted for the stage by her artistic partner and ex-husband Robert Nemiroff.  Also produced posthumously was the work she considered her most important, which was not quite completed at her death.  That was the play Les Blancs, which was also adapted by Nemiroff.

Oakland Theater Project and Director James Mercer II have produced a vivid and powerful rendition of Hansberry’s chilling play about relationships between colonials and locals in an undisclosed African country during a time of instability.  Notwithstanding a brilliantly delivered narrative, the production does have one considerable fault to be discussed later.

The complex drama challenges the theatergoer by offering up characters from various social, political, and racial backgrounds that refuse to fit conveniently into neat little boxes.  And the action involves brother versus brother in the very literal sense and at the highest level of conflict.

Hansberry was a committed political activist from a young age.  For this, her only play set in Africa, she was particularly influenced by the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya and by Jean Genet’s play Les Negres.  Hansberry’s title deliberately caroms off Genet’s, and part of her motivation was to challenge the romanticized naivete in Genet’s depictions.

Les Blancs takes place in a poor village lacking electricity.  European doctors operate a primitive medical facility doing the best they can with poor resources.  It is a time of native terror in revolt against colonial rule, and one doctor notes portentously that even the foreigners who sympathize with the natives and do good works are often victimized by revolutionaries.

Into this tinderbox, Tshembe returns to his homeland from London.  His father was ill but passes before his arrival.  The centerpiece to the cognitive side of the play involves the heated discussions between Tshembe and an American journalist, Charlie Morris.  Each character is flawed, and passionate in his beliefs.  Though they both occupy middle ground in the political spectrum, they still speak past one another and each considers the other a hypocrite.  In effect, Tshembe represents Hansberry’s voice, insistent that colonialism must end, but patient enough to want an amicable parting with the colonial power.  Morris represents Jean Genet and a class of Caucasians who are socially liberal and well-intended, yet condescend and act as apologists for the historic role of colonialists.

Against this backdrop, near-stereotypical characters, but with internal conflicts and complicated underpinnings, interact.  There is the racist white African-born police officer; the elder European widow who considers Africa her home; the otherwise obedient African servant secretly involved in the revolution; the “Uncle Tom” who sells out to western religion, and thus to colonialism; and more.  In time, tragedy ensues, affecting all, not as a conflagration, but as a series of violent incidents.

OTP’s largely abstract scenic design allows the actors to deliver most of the feeling of the environment.  Jeunée Simon portrays Tshembe and creates a riveting persona, who, despite having a foot in the white world and being resistant to joining the terror, demonstrates viewpoints emphatically with body and voice.  Champagne Hughes as Charlie Morris stands up to the onslaught with like fervor.

With regard to the earlier mentioned fault, acting by each of the eight actors ranges from good to excellent.  However, one issue that will cause consternation to some audience members concerns a well-intended but confusing casting approach.  All actors appear to be black women, though the genders and races of some actors may vary from that assumption. Yet they portray black and white, man and woman.  To make things more confusing, three of the actors play two roles each.  Many audience members will be at sea until they unearth the identifications, which are not clear from the outset.

Some natives have European names like Eric and Peter.  And even with a name like Madame Nielsen or a “doctor” named Marta, we cannot assume that they are white until the facts make it clear.  Because all actors are visibly women, with the exception of Simon whose hair is cut in the fashion of a man, I had difficulty perceiving some of the characters as men, whether white or black, to the very end.

Although I am not a psychologist, I suspect that a typical mind can mentally transpose, for instance, one black female opera singer as playing Madame Butterfly, but a whole non-conforming cast taxes the cognitive ability.  As trite as it seems, it would help if markers are identified before the performance by announcing, for instance, that all characters dressed in light colors are Europeans and all in dark colors are African.  That condition is actually close to the case.  It’s unfortunate that trying to disentangle these conundrums distracts from an otherwise powerful experience.

Les Blancs, written by Lorraine Hansberry and adapted by Robert Nemiroff is produced by Oakland Theater Project, and plays at FLAX art & design, 1501 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Oakland, CA through July 27, 2025.