You may feel like you’ve landed in a retro church service for the first 15 minutes of the sparkling new production of The Amen Corner from Shakespeare Theatre Company, what with the “praise Gods,” spirited hymn singing and Sunday-best hats on display. That’s because the play—a drama by mid-century African-American writer James Baldwin (with newly composed and adapted spiritual music interludes by Victor Simonson)—takes place in and around a Harlem street-corner church in the 1950s.
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