In Splendid Error (A Black Retrospective 2)

This was the second in a series of plays produced by NFT in the 1978-79 season reviving the best African-American plays from the 1940s and 50s.

In Splendid Error tells the story of Frederick Douglas’ relationship with John Brown, and premiered in October, 1954 at the Greenwich Mews, an off-Broadway theater.

“[It] did not receive the notice it should have. Too many people, a number of reviewers included-among them the learned and greatly respected Brooks Atkinson  of the New York Times- had never even heard of Frederick Douglas. And armed with this gap in their education, some of the reviewers went forth and questioned whether the “playwright was over- romanticizing in ‘creating’ such a figure.” – James V. Hatch and Ted Shine, Black Theatre in America