In 1981, at Ronald Reagan’s celebrity-crusted inaugural ball, the actor Ben Vereen donned blackface as part of a planned tribute to Bert Williams, who as an early 20th century Black vaudevillian typically had no choice but to do the same. You may recall the moment if you are old enough: Johnny Carson making the introduction and then Vereen soft-shoeing “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee” for the new president and his wife, surrounded by an audience that was almost all white.
Vereen, who then was best known for playing “Chicken” George in Alex Haley’s “Roots,” followed his performance of that ragtime classic with “Nobody,” a much quieter piece wherein he removed the makeup, staged a scenario where a bartender refused to serve Williams, and generally probed the challenges faced by all Black performers of that era. But ABC, which broadcast the festive shebang, kept the first half (and a performance by Donny and Marie Osmond), but cut “Nobody” and thus it looked to much of America that Vereen had demeaned himself by shucking and jiving in front of Ronnie, Nancy and a bunch of grinning fat cats.
Vereen, who now is 78 years old, faced a severe backlash.
That night is the topic of the very interesting Edgar Arceneaux performance piece, titled “Until, Until, Until …,” that you can see at the Museum of Contemporary Art, just this weekend. In essence, it’s a re-creation of that evening, with Frank Lawson playing Vereen (this mostly is a solo show) with Jes Dugger as Marie Osmond. You could think of it as a deconstruction of what turned out to be one of the worst nights of Vereen’s professional life. (For the record, I saw many great ones.)
This piece was seen in several East Coast cities prior to the pandemic; I suspect the MCA has timed it for here in part due to the pending election.
From an audience perspective, there are weirdnesses. If you walk in at the stated starting time, you’ll be told that the show begins with a cocktail hour that’s part of the show. There’s a (costly) bar on stage but nothing happens beyond people sitting in either seats or at large round tables and a few folks walking around with video cameras. This goes on for an hour, presumably to make the audience feel like they are at the event. It didn’t work Friday, not least because, well, nothing was happening, the space was not really conducive to what the show was attempting, and lurking videographers is one heck of a good way to spoil a drink. I sat in a seat and checked out the hipster eyewear around me, always impressive at the MCA. So skip at least some of that, unless you are going with a group of friends (there is a better bar at Marisol across the hall).
But once the 55-minute show actually starts, it’s a different matter. You see that Lawson’s Vereen has been told to pizzazz it up, pushing the actor to walk further into what turned out to be a trap. The performance itself is made all the more powerful by lots of skillfully edited footage of the original audience, some of whom are recognizable to those of us of a certain age, and of course of the honoree himself, smiling back, thoughts unknown. The images of pearls and laughing faces are projected on drapes and, after a few minutes, you get to crowd around a representation of Vereen’s contemporaneous dressing room.
The show has a tragic patina, frankly, and it certainly is enough to get you thinking back to that era, to the indignities that Black performers often had to be willing to endure for politicians, or heck, to get their work seen. If you are interested in the complicated history of Black song-and-dance men performing for whites, this piece will resonate. It certainly imprinted itself on me.
“Until, Until, Until …” isn’t the perfect match for this physical space but it sure was good to be back seeing this level of performance at the MCA. I’ve missed the glory days of this program under curator Peter Taub, when provocative works like this were routine presentations and they didn’t have to conform to what was going on elsewhere in the museum, a change that proved a mistake. Relevance to the world is enough.
The MCA was built with an excellent theater, now underused. May that change.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Until, Until, Until …” (3 stars)
When: Through 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: MCA Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, with a performance of 55 minutes
Tickets: $32-$40 at mcachicago.org