Asahina examines Fuller's play, citing its recent Pulitzer Prize victory as well-deserved. In appraising the racial themes of the drama, the critic credits Fuller with "creating a truly tragic character" in Sergeant Waters.

For a change, this year's Pulitzer Prize actually went to the season's most deserving work: Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play, produced by the Negro Ensemble Company and directed by Douglas Turner Ward. But it deserves criticism as well as praise.

Set in 1944, A Soldier's Play could also have been written then; it is a straightforward piece of psychological realism that takes the form of a murder mystery. In the first scene, Vernon C. Waters (Adolph Caesar), a Tech/Sergeant in the 221st Chemical Smoke Generating Company, is killed by two unknown assailants. Waters is black, as are the other noncoms and enlisted men at Fort Neal, Louisiana, in the year before the end of...