DEVELOPMENT HISTORY

THE STORY

It's just after World War II. For years black people have been fleeing Mississippi in droves. Not "Prince"Albert Clayton, a struggling sharecropper, and a proud and gifted grower. He feels he fits in. The little town he lives in is truly "home."When he decides to fulfill a lifelong dream, and makes plans to paint his shabby tenant house white, that simple notion turns his world upside-down.

Almost everyone is against it, his landlord and the whites in town, most of the blacks too -- his wife, his friends, his son, even his preacher. He's pressed from every side.

Stubborn and determined, Albert pushes on as passions erupt, and hate and fear gather like a dark summer storm, shattering family and community, threatening life itself.

The show is gripping, touching, often funny, full of life and rhythm, with a blues, gospel, and Americana score that has audiences clapping and singing.

CRITIQUE

"A Good Man is a beautiful, honestly written musical story about grace under enormous pressure, so deceptively simple that it rings starkly true, with great impact on all of us. Grace is powerfully evident in the character of our hero whose white house is a vision of what all of life might be, were he able to pursue his dreams.

Philip Goodman's taut book and lyrics are miracles of quiet dignity and vivid expression; surprises abound, and they seem inevitable in retrospect, but we never see them coming.

Ray Leslee's powerful music cultivates seam after seam of blues, devotional tradition and nuance, and we not only hear these songs we can almost touch, taste and smell them, deep, rich, dark, and life-giving."

-- Donna Trinkoff, Amas Artistic Producer, quoted in Broadway World.