(mis)Understanding Mammy: Understanding Hattie

Hattie McDaniel was a pioneer of the rarest sort. She was the first African-American woman to get her own national radio show. She was one of the first African-American women to get her own national television series. And, perhaps most famously, she was the first African-American to be nominated for—much less win-- an Academy Award.

But for all her successes, Hattie McDaniel was and is a highly controversial figure in Hollywood history. She was able to keep working in an industry that was almost entirely white-- by playing maids; most famously, Mammy in Gone with the Wind. This didn't sit well with the NAACP, and rather than protest the producers and screenwriters who kept Black actors in subservient roles, the Association went after McDaniel, nearly destroying the career she has struggled so hard to achieve.

McDaniel's remarkable life, career and controversy are examined in the fascinating new play (mis)Understanding Mammy by Joan Ross Sorkin. The play, part of Emerging Artists Theatre's Triple Threat festival, has arrived just in time for Black History Month, and is the perfect way to remind audiences of how far African American performers have come-- and how far they have to go.

The script is impressively worthy of its material, and manages to avoid the traps that so often plague one-person shows. Even more impressive is how the play manages to be fresh, vibrant and vital while simultaneously hitting so many clichés of the genre: a person on her deathbed narrates her life to an invisible and silent other (in this case, NAACP president Walter White, McDaniel's main detractor in life). It might easily have fallen from drama to lecture, but Sorkin's script is rife with conflict, and her McDaniel, as portrayed by star-in-the-making Capathia Jenkins (late of Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me), is intense and passionate.

As McDaniel, Jenkins is a veritable volcano of energy. Sometimes she merely rumbles, letting the audience sense the power underneath. And when she explodes, raging like Lear on the heath, she perfectly punctuates each emotional moment, setting us up for the next stretch of the roller-coaster ride. At several points in the play, Jenkins recreates the classic 20's songs that first got McDaniel noticed, and lets the numbers reveal more layers to her character. It is a tour-de-force performance that should solidify Jenkins' status as one of the strongest newcomers on the scene.

Ideally, (mis)Understanding Mammy will transfer to an open-ended off-Broadway run where young audiences can attend and learn about a brilliant talent that managed to shine against all odds. Hattie McDaniel's story is as inspiring as it is fascinating, and this exciting new play is a wonderful way to learn about African-American and theatrical history.