LA Times’ Culture Monster Theater review: ‘The Emperor’s Last Performance’ at Los Angeles Theatre Centre

An unjustly forgotten chapter in American theatrical and racial history is the raison d’être of “The Emperor’s Last Performance,” which ends its limited Los Angeles Theatre Center run on Sunday. This respectable Robey Theatre Company staging of Melvin Ishmael Johnson’s drama about the first star of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones” merges the techniques of stage fantasia and social document. Once... Read More

REVIEW: Robey Theatre Company, Scarecrow Press illuminate theatre history

Paul Robeson is well remembered today for his performance as the self-appointed monarch of a Caribbean island in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones.” What’s been largely forgotten is that it was the first important dramatic role for a black actor on Broadway—and that the actor who created the part was not Robeson but a man named Charles Gilpin. “The Emperor’s Last Performance” by Melvin Ishmael Johnson, now in a limited world premiere... Read More