Theater review by Melissa Rose Bernardo
Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s eye-opening 2021 drama Cullud Wattah explored the devastating physical, emotional, and economic effects of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Now she has returned to the Public Theater with another water-powered play: the lyrical and lugubrious shadow/land, the first entry in a planned 10-play cycle about the damage wrought by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina on the playwright’s hometown, New Orleans.
First produced as an audio play at the Public in 2021, shadow/land brings the mass destruction into focus by centering on two women. Eighty-year-old Magalee (Cullud Wattah’s Lizan Mitchell) is the primary owner of a bar called Shadowland that has been in the family for generations; her caretaker daughter, Ruth (Joniece Abbott-Pratt), wants to sell the building while it’s still standing. “It’s about the land,” Magalee says. “Come hell or high wawdah, I cant sell it Ruth.” (The latter will come sooner than anyone suspects.) Magalee also has middle-stage dementia, so arguing with her about anything—selling Shadowland, getting out of the path of the storm—is futile. “I was 40 when Betsy came through blowin her trumpet & Im still here & Ima be here afta Katrina hardens into a gnarled cackle,” she insists. “Ev’ry storm just a jealous band memba vyin for the spotlight tryna top the last solo.” A third character, the sharp-suited Grand Marshal (a liquidy, loose-limbed Christine Shepard), dances around the edges of the stage, serving as a sort of sepulchral guide.
Nothing brings family closer than tragedy, and as mother and daughter watch the water rise around them, long-buried secrets and uncomfortable truths begin to surface. Ruth confesses her desire for something—or someone—more than her husband and daughter; “I aint got not word for it,” says Ruth of her relationship with a woman named Frankie. As the temperature becomes more stifling, the women strip down, both literally and figuratively. (“You oughtta get some nice matchin panty & bra sets Ruth,” chides Magalee.) Those confessionals can be clunky, and sometimes barely audible amid the din of sound designer Palmer Hefferan’s frighteningly realistic soundscape. But although you might have to strain to hear Mitchell, it’s worth the effort: In an occasionally cloudy play, she’s giving a performance that burns through the roof—and reaches, as Ruth says, “beaucoup stars peekin through the vault of heavn.”
shadow/land. Public Theater (Off Broadway). By Erika Dickerson-Despenza. Directed by Candis C. Jones. With Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Lizan Mitchell, Christine Shepard. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission.
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shadow/land. Public Theater (Off Broadway). By Erika Dickerson-Despenza. Directed by Candis C. Jones. With Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Lizan Mitchell, Christine Shepard. Running time: 1hr 30mins. No intermission.
Follow Melissa Rose Bernardo on Twitter: @mrbplus
Follow Time Out Theater on Twitter: @TimeOutTheater
Keep up with the latest news and reviews on our Time Out Theater Facebook page
shadow/land | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus