Word: capped
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...show opens with a burst of well-directed energy which carries the first few scenes with reasonable crispness. Animation leaps from the opening number, a mock funeral for the tyrannical and bigoted Ol' Cap'n Cotchipee (Christopher Charron); the actors bounce cheerfully through the rather simplistic choreography, though the Old Library stage affords little room for 20 dancers to swing. Things seem fine through the establishment of a few basic plot premises...
Purlie Victorious Judson (Lance LaVergne), an idealistic young Black preacher who dreams of buying and then integrating a church, brings Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins (Wendy Jamerson), a simpleminded kitchen maid, to town to masquerade as his college-educated cousin Bea. In that guise, Purlie hopes, she can collect from Cap'n Cotchipee the $500 he has held in trust for the real Bea's dead mother. Purlie wants the money to found his church, but when he falls in love with Lutiebelle he runs into a snag. So does the production...
Only Ronald Brown, as Gitlow Judson, avoids the pervasive half-hearted mugging and posturing. Judson, Purlie's feisty brother-in-law, retains influence over Ol' Cap'n by posing as the stereotypical obsequious cotton-picker. Brown swaggers and staggers through the play's increasingly disjointed action with true comic aplomb, bawling "There's More Than One Way of Skinnin' a Cat" with reckless disregard for his tone-deafness, and applying his sense of dramatic timing to the moments that his cohorts largely let slip...
Unfortunately, such assurance only makes others' lack of depth more painfully obvious. Charron as the Cap'n is too busy mugging to create even a convincing caricature of the traditional Southern bigot, though Jeremy Rabinovitz contorts his own face to better effect as Cotchipee's wimpy-yet-enlightened son. As these two and others draw Purlie into more and more awkward predicaments, one realizes LaVergne's repertoire of emotions is limited to a few gestures--a frown and shake of the head for disappointment, and a recurrent toss of the shoulders to suggest the determined faith that is ostensibly Purlie...
...estimates that 5 to 10 million dollars a year is being paid in taxes by the uncontrolled sector of the City to make up for the lost taxes which rent controlled buildings cannot pay. (Rent Controlled buildings pay lower taxes because they are worth less due to their income cap. Therefore they are assessed at less and the City collects less tax from these properties). How many Cambridge tax payers are aware of the extra taxes built into their tax bill to make up for these losses...