Optimists say: "Residential integration is the solution; when the children live together they will go to school together."
Pessimists say: "Integration is the period of time between the first black person moving into the neighborhood and the last white person moving out."
Playwright Joanna McClelland Glass seems to side — sadly — with the pessimists in her interesting, thought-provoking, relevant play, "Palmer Park," which opened at the History Museum last night as a joint production of the St. Louis Actors Studio and the St. Louis Black Rep. It will run through Nov. 20.
St. Louisans who lived in and/or remember the days of Laclede Park and Laclede Town will see many parallels. I lived there most of the 1960s, in that decade whose banner showed liberalism rampant on a field of fun, and if our neighborhood's collapse was not identical with that of Glass' Detroiters, the same weakened seams eventually helped rend both fabrics.
The play deals with five couples — three white, two black — in the real Detroit neighborhood of Palmer Park, quiet and leafy, with wide streets and large houses. Hampton School was a centerpiece. Fletcher and Linda Hazelton (Reginald Pierre and Jeanitta Perkins) watch as Martin and Kate Townsend (Chad Morris and Rachel Hanks) move into the house next door. Fletcher is a black pediatrician, Martin a white physicist hired by Wayne State University. They have daughters of similar age. Both have dogs; the Hazeltons have an Irish setter, the Townsends have a mutt. Linda, after ridiculing her husband's idea of fried chicken carries chicken tetrazzini ("It's a Julia Child recipe," she says, heavy-handedly and off-handedly at the same time) to the new neighbors.
Three other couples form the social circle for Glass' drama: Sol and Harriet Rifkin (Tom Wethington and Laura Coppinger), Ron and Alice Marshall (Philip Dixon and Candice Jackson) and Phil and Gretta Lamont (Aaron Orion Baker and Emily Baker). Sol is a white real-estate broker and the man who brought the Townsends into the neighborhood, Ron is a black lawyer and Phil, also white, runs a retail store.
All five couples are proud to be where they are, living the good life in nice houses with good neighbors and good schools. They mingle well, entertain one another and are eager participants in the PTA, contributing money so Hampton School can have the best equipment and supplies. And then the shock; Bagley School, in the next neighborhood, is almost totally black, lacks supplies, has overcrowded classrooms and children who don't learn.
Bagley is appealing to the school board to send its extra children to Hampton School, which is not overcrowded. Its parents claim that the Hampton parents should not be using their contributions to provide an edge to their pupils. Hampton, represented by Ron Marshall, wants the board to provide temporary classrooms to Bagley so that Hampton can remain better and, on another level, continue a segregated system, but making the segregation economic rather than racial.
Glass uses short scenes, brief conversations to move the action along, and she, who lived in Palmer Park, follows Detroit history in the late '60s, including the Cardinals-Tigers World Series of 1968. She has enough light moments to keep the play from becoming too gloomy, and she leavens things with a bad joke here and there. Projecting photos of Palmer Park houses, including the one where Glass lived, and other Detroit scenes, provide a good backdrop to a basically bare stage.
The story is well-told, and the sadness at the end of a worthy experiment comes through without being belabored. The acting is variable, but earnest. Pierre and Perkins are a well-matched couple, and Morris adds passion as he pleads for the neighborhood to remain unchanged, because neighborhoods, like banks, follow Gresham's Law, "Bad (be it money or neighbors) drives out good."
Palmer Park, a drama presented by the St. Louis Actors Studio and the St. Louis Black Repertory Company, opened last night at the History Museum and continues through Nov. 20
— Joe