I confess to have been more impressed by Lorraine Hansberry's Les Blancs … than I expected to be; more, indeed, than most of the professional theatre-tasters. At a time when rave reviews are reserved for plays like Sleuth and Conduct Unbecoming, I am tempted to speak of Les Blancs in superlatives.

I suspect, too, that resistance to the play on the ground of its simplistic argument is a rationalization for social embarrassment. Les Blancs is not propaganda, as has been inferred; it is a forceful and intelligent statement of the tragic impasse of white and black relations all over the world, as well as of the complexity of motivation and effect where European nations colonize undeveloped lands inhabited by blacks.

The play transcends the banalities in the intellectual disputes about this conflict; it clarifies, but does not seek to resolve, the historical and human problems involved. It does not...