Young Buds: ‘Malcolm X and Redd Foxx’ at City Theatre

This much is true, for starters: There really was a restaurant and jazz club called Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in upper Manhattan, near the Harlem River. And for a while in the 1940s, two young men who later became famous worked as dishwashers at Jimmy’s. They were 18-year-old Malcolm Little—later Malcolm X—and 20-year-old John Elroy Sanford, aka the standup comic and TV star Redd Foxx. During their time as coworkers, these two seemingly strange bedfellows got along well, even joining together in activities outside the job (some of which were also outside the law). 

Now, that unusual buddy episode gets a fictionalized treatment. City Theatre presents playwright Jonathan Norton’s Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem, through February 8. The play is a riotous two-hander. It gives two excellent actors a chance to strut their stuff: Trey Smith-Mills, as young Redd, just might be funnier than the real Redd Foxx was. Things turn serious near the end, which seems fitting. The play’s story arc takes us to the cusp of the time when the real young Malcolm plunged into the wrenching personal changes that would turn him from a budding career criminal to an iconic—and ultimately tragic—historical figure.  

And here’s where we get into murky waters. Plays, movies, and miniseries about real people from history take on a paradoxical challenge. The creators of these works are, to some extent, imagining what might’ve gone down in personal interactions that didn’t make it into the historical record. Yet at the same time, to at least some extent, they try to pin the story to actual, known facts and events, to make it credible. The results can be all over the map in terms of historical accuracy. Mel Gibson’s 1995 film Braveheart massively mangled the true story of the medieval Scottish knight William Wallace (but scored a Best-Picture Oscar anyway). Biopics grounded in more recent history have tended to stay mostly on the mark, as did Oppenheimer. Or, for that matter, Spike Lee’s 1992 Malcolm X—which drew both from recorded speeches and actions, and from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the book Malcolm made with writer Alex Haley. 

This reviewer’s advice to theatergoers: Please don’t get too caught up in the historical-accuracy thing when you see the Malcolm X and Redd Foxx play. I would even advise you to disregard the statements in the play’s program from director Dexter J. Singleton, who also served as dramaturg. Singleton said, in part, that he hopes the play will help audiences “discover something new about these men [i.e., real Malcolm and Redd] and gain a new respect for them and what they accomplished.” 

Certainly in real life, both men accomplished a lot, Malcolm as an activist and Foxx as a boundary-breaker in comedy. It’s further possible that the play offers some real insights into their formative years. But a play is a work of art unto itself. And here we have a work of art from a new-generation playwright riffing on past events through a unique lens of his own. On his website, Jonathan Norton writes: “What I do is excavation. I dig up stories that have been buried. I create worlds that no longer exist, and make them new again…” Perhaps those words suggest the best spirit in which to absorb Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem. 

The Play’s the Thing

“Kitchen sink realism” was a genre popularized by British plays and movies about working-class Brits of the 1950s and ‘60s. In this play about working-class African Americans of the 1940s, you literally get a kitchen sink. The setting is the dishwashing area in the back of Jimmy’s Chicken Shack. The action opens on Malcolm (played by Edwin Green), who dances about as he alternates between working at the sink and propping open the door to the front of the house, so he can hear the jazz-piano music being played there. Enter Foxx, barging in via the rear from a cigarette break, and promptly chastising his younger colleague for leaving that door ajar: It’s against the rules! You want our guests to hear dishwashing clatter? 

What ensues is a farcical dance—Malcolm gliding over to re-prop the door; Foxx countering the move—and I reiterate the word “dance” because so much of the play’s appeal comes from its physical action and humor. The actors are perfect physical matches for their contrasting roles. Green is tall, slender, and graceful, as the real Malcolm X was, while Smith-Mills is a chunkier powderkeg, like the real Redd Foxx. Put ‘em together and you’ve got a classic comical counterpoint in the style of Laurel and Hardy, or Abbott and Costello. 

Malcolm and Foxx are more than a match for those pairs. Often, it’s Smith-Mills’ Foxx who dominates the dynamic. Darn near every single reaction-take and bit of bluster is a hoot. We learn that young Foxx is already dreaming himself into a career as a big-time performer—”I’m not in show business. I am show business,” he proclaims, strutting and pose-striking to his utmost. And repeatedly, throughout the play, Foxx tries out joke-telling routines and mawky, melodramatic serious bits with which he aims to knock dead some future audience. 

The humor comes largely from the fact that in those kitchen-sink tryout scenes, Foxx is awfully hammy. (It takes a skilled actor to do a good job of bad acting. Smith-Mills has it.) 

And here’s where a stroke of genius comes through in the play. Time and again, we see the less-florid but more fluent Malcolm chiding and coaxing Foxx into doing better. Whether this actually happened, I don’t know. But it makes perfect sense historically. The real Malcolm X was, himself, a powerful performer. As an orator, he moved millions—not with put-on histrionics, but just by straightforwardly expressing who he was, and what he was thinking or feeling at the time. 

Which is sort of how he nudges Foxx to be, in the play. The message is that real power doesn’t come from reaching for it. Power comes from knowing who you are and letting yourself come out. 

Happy and Unhappy Endings

Of course there’s much more to Malcolm X and Redd Foxx than what I’ve described. In some scenes we are shown, for example, that young Malcolm is a spiritual seeker. He attends a church called the Holy Gospel Temple of Refuge, sometimes wears a Turkish-style fez emblazoned with a cross, and urges Foxx to join the flock. (A typical exchange: “God wants us to be humble.” “Fuck humble!”)

Neither young man, in the play, appears to attain true union with the Godhead. Both are too busy bantering bawdily, pulling small-time scams, and planning big moves that somehow don’t happen. But gradually we see something growing that truly matters. It’s a friendship. And in that regard, Foxx is the one who proves to be the great mentor—the one who’s there for his buddy at the climax of the play, talking young Malcolm back from the brink of dark despair.

Malcolm X’s real life ended when he was assassinated in 1965, at the age of 39. He had recently distanced himself from the Nation of Islam, with its themes of Black separatism and militant self-reliance, after undergoing a religious conversion experience. It wasn’t the first of his lifetime, but would be his last. 

The real Redd Foxx died in 1991, at the age of 68. He died while rehearsing a role in a new TV sitcom. Fellow cast members thought he was faking a heart attack—which he’d often done, to humorous effect, while starring in the hit “Sanford and Son” during the 1970s. But that last attack was no fake. 

You can die searching, or you can die laughing. Maybe it’s best to double down while you’re alive and do both. 

Closing Credits and Ticket Info

Jonathan Norton’s Malcolm X and Redd Foxx Washing Dishes at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack in Harlem runs through February 8 on City Theatre’s mainstage, 1300 Bingham St., South Side. Visit City on the web for reservations and further details. 

The play was commissioned by TheatreSquared of Fayetteville, Arkansas, and opened there this past October. City Theatre’s production uses the same actors and director. After its Pittsburgh run, the play continues its rolling premiere by moving to Virginia Stage Company of Norfolk in April, and then to Dallas Theater Center in Texas (where playwright Norton is interim artistic director) in May. All companies mentioned took part in co-producing. 

Lighting for the play at City Theatre is by Levi J. Wilkins, with sound by Howard Patterson, costumes by Claudia Brownlee, and props by Brodie Jasch. The production stage manager is Patti Kelly. 

Photos by Kristi Jan Hoover.

Mike Vargo, an independent writer based in Pittsburgh, covers theater and the visual arts for Entertainment Central.  

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