Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, the author of last season’s The Harder They Come, returns to her artistic home with an edgy dramedy that celebrates the craft of theater while taking a hard look at history.
The off-off-off-Broadway theater troupe Good Company is putting on a play about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Writer Luce is cast as Sally; her romantic partner, and the play’s director, Mike, is cast as Tom—really, people, what could possibly go wrong?
Director Steve H. Broadmax III keeps the action bubbling, the parallel story lines clear and swift. Set designer Riccardo Hernández even manages to endow the boxy Martinson stage with a bit of mystery and depth. Partway through, a pentimento emerges from a splotchy, black-and-white background wash of … what? Foliage? Dirt? Blood? The story of Sally and Tom will haunt you – as it should.
Parks has described herself as a “myth head” who likes to color outside of history’s lines; paradoxically, the most variegated moments in her latest effort are not the historically inspired ones or the ones thinly disguised as essays, but the processual ones evoking the hurly-burly of dress rehearsals. Changing costumes, applying makeup, practicing swings and punches, the actors make us care about their unplanned pregnancy, their run-in with cops, their terror of being off-book, their prospects of getting cast in an indie film.
2024 | Off-Broadway |
Public Theater Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Costume Design of a Play | Rodrigo Muñoz |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Wig and Hair | J. Jared Janas |
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