Before he staged “Angels in America” on Broadway, before he took the helm at the Public Theater in New York, before he moved into filmmaking and brought us “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Rustin,” George C. Wolfe was a wet-behind-the-ears playwright whose experimental off-Broadway musical “Paradise” had just been demolished by the New York Times. What better time for a young Black writer to square his shoulders and take a swing at the titans of 20th-century African American culture?.
