A young conservative black man, minding his own business, rides a nearly empty subway car. The only other passenger, a blonde vixen looking for trouble, sizes him up. Sexual tension, racial bigotry and righteous fury collide in a razor's edge confrontation between this unlikely pair.
Acting
Shirley Knight's unhinged provocateur is genuinely terrifying.
Writing
Amiri Baraka's dialogue cuts like broken glass.
Director
Anthony Harvey
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Adapted from Amiri Baraka's (then LeRoi Jones) Obie-winning play, written during his Greenwich Village beatnik period before his Black Arts Movement radicalization.
The subway setting transforms the original's 'flying Dutchman' train metaphor into literal underground purgatory—claustrophobia as racial condition.
GB
