SOURCE: “A Discovery Worth the Wait,” in Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Gloria L. Cronin, G. K. Hall & Co., 1998, pp. 232-36.

In the following review, originally published in the Los Angeles Times on February 24, 1991, Pacheco acknowledges the dramatic limitations of Mule Bone but favorably assesses its first production in 1991.

In the Broadway production of Mule Bone, the characters gathered on the teeming porch of Joe Clark's general store in Eatonville, Fla., tease and cajole each other, laughing at the small-town follies at the heart of this 1930 comedy written by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

Given the familiarity with which the all-black cast of 30 inhabit their roles, it seems as though these folks have been sitting on that porch forever. But Mule Bone is coming to the stage 60 years after writer Hurston and poet Hughes, the royal couple of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920's...