Charles
Isherwood

January 28, 2013

The ringing speeches and singing sermons never seem to stop in the stage version of “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison’s landmark 1952 novel about a young African-American in search of himself, now at the Huntington Theater Company’s Boston University Theater after stints in Chicago and Washington. Although the book’s protagonist does not find his voice as a professional orator until midway through his harrowing journey in a racially divided America, in Oren Jacoby’s faithful but lifeless theatrical adaptation the hero often seems to be presiding at an invisible podium, providing us with crisp talking points about the cruel truths of the black experience.