Thomas Jefferson shows up near the end of “A Free Man of Color.” He really takes it on the chin from a humiliated mulatto named Jacques Cornet.
The hero of John Guare’s fever dream of a play has tumbled from the height of New Orleans society to slave-auction chattel when he summons the third U.S. president. Jefferson has just purchased the Louisiana Territory from the French; slavery is suddenly the law of the annexed land.
