No Place to Be Somebody is a 1969 play by Charles Gordone.
The setting is contemporary New York City, and the cast is mostly African-Americans. Gabe Gabriel is an aspiring young actor/poet/playwright who frequents a particular dive bar in what is probably supposed to be Harlem, although the play doesn't specify. The bar is owned by one Johnny Williams, an angry young man with a chip on his shoulder who believes in the inevitability of a race war between black and white.
Johnny resents the Italian gangsters who control the area, and particularly Mike Mafucci, a low-level Mafia hood. Some years ago, when they were teenagers, Johnny went to the reformatory for a petty crime while Mike's Mafia dad got him off the hook. Now, Johnny wants to join forces with Sweets Crane, an old gangster who is getting out of jail after a ten-year sentence. When Sweets gets out, only to prove reluctant to get back into the life, Johnny comes up with another way to gain the upper hand over the Mafia.
Tropes:
- Anti-Hero: Johnny, the protagonist, is a bad guy. He's a liar, he's a crook, and worst of all, he's a pimp, who ruthlessly exploits Dee, his prostitute who loves him. He also expressly rejects a chance at a new life at the end, preferring revenge and confrontation with the mob.
- Aside Comment: On multiple occasions Gabe addresses the audience directly in speeches that are outside the continuity of the play.
- Author Avatar: Gabe, the actor and playwright, basically is Charles Gordone.
- Book Ends: Begins and ends with Gabe delivering soliloquies, addressing the audience directly.
- Call-Back: Early in the play it's revealed that Dee, who hopes to get out of prostitution and marry Johnny, carries baby shoes in her purse. Towards the end, when Johnny has thrown her over for Mary Lou, she throws the baby shoes out on the floor of the bar before going home and killing herself.
- Character Filibuster: Gabe goes on several long soliloquies. Some seem to be out of the continuity of the story. Others are in-universe, like the longest one, where Gabe entertains the other barflies with a satirical poem about the March on Washington that runs for four pages.
- Comically Cross-Eyed: Gabe does this after, on a dare from Johnny, he drinks from a water glass that's half-full of vodka.
- Dreadful Musician: Shanty talks big about making it as a professional drummer, but he needs drums. When Cora has saved up enough and finally gotten him some drums, Shanty tries them out in the bar...and he is terrible.
- Greek Chorus: Gabe, who comments directly to the audience and doesn't take much direct part in the action, at least until the end, where he contributes decisively.
- Groin Attack: Johnny is about to slap Evie when she's quicker, and kicks him in the groin instead.
- Hangover Sensitivity: Dee is wincing from a hangover when she comes into the bar one day. She's eventually revealed as a Lady Drunk.
- Hypocrite: Johnny doesn't want Dee to marry him and help him build up the bar, because he says any wife of his would have to be a Housewife. This is just moments after he insists she keep working as a prostitute.
- I Lied: As Sweets lies dying, he gets Johnny to promise that he will go straight, and build a life for himself with the pretty substantial list of assets that Sweets has left him. Right after Sweets dies, Johnny tells Gabe that he was lying, and he intends to use the incriminating files to blackmail the mob.
- Lady Drunk: Dee is a heavy drinker who kills bottles of alcohol at the bar. She gets good and drunk in her last scene, where she confronts Johnny about cheating on her, before staggering out of the bar and killing herself offstage.Evie: That bottle ain't doin' you a dam bit'a good.
Dee: That's debatable.
Evie: How 'bout a nice cup a' black coffee?
Dee: Uh uh. Gotta stay here and wait for Johnny.
Evie: Pretty soon you'll be waitin' for him on the floor.
Dee: Drunk or sober, it doesn't matter anyway. - Local Hangout: The entire play takes place in Johnny's bar.
- MacGuffin: The incriminating documents about the mob, which Mary Lou steals from her father's office (he's a Mob lawyer), and which lead directly to the climax.
- Mutual Kill: Maffucci shoots Sweets to death, but just a little too late to stop Sweets from stabbing him in the heart.
- Never Learned to Read: Johnny can't read, which is revealed when he has to give Sweets's will to Shanty to read.
- A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: In a strange aside, Melvin talks about how he went to a party, where everybody took their clothes off and it turned to an orgy...and then they forcibly stripped and raped him.
- Ripped from the Headlines: In the backstory, mobster Joe Carceri is said to have gotten whacked while in a barber's chair. This happened in Real Life to mobster Albert Anastasia.
- Widow's Weeds: Ends with Gabe dressed as a woman, specifically in Widow's Weeds, for a soliloquy in which he tells the audience that white society ignores black pain.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Sweets has six months to live, presumably from lung cancer, given his cough. He's draw a will leaving everything—which is quite a bit, he has several businesses and some real estate—to Johnny.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me
- When an enraged Johnny pulls a gun on Sweets after Sweets refuses to back his plans, Sweets says "You ain't gon' shoot me." He's right.
- At the end, after the shootout in the bar, when Gabe has a gun pointed at Johnny, Johnny says "You ain't got the guts!" He's wrong.
