- OTHER MEDIA
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- Review in the San Francisco Bay Guardian March 24, 2010 (Robert
Avila)
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- Amid the tumult of the American Civil War, a former slave named Damascus
(a subtle, commanding Aldo Billingslea) searches for his daughter, desperate
to pass on his song to her lest it be forgotten. Plucked from a tree and
a noose by a god moved to see him get a second chance, he searches on,
now as a woman named Demeter, until he finds a white family called the
Verses, served by a downhome Shakespearean schemer named Brer Bit (Martin
F. Grizzell, Jr.) and headed by a bitter matriarch (Jeanette Harrison)
in the absence of the paterfamilias (David Sinaiko), a deserter-turned-scavenger
making his way back with a Yankee bugler (Zac Schuman) in tow. Twin daughters
Blanche (Sarah Mitchell) and Free (Erika A. McCrary), meanwhile, are not
so very identical, and Demeter suspects that Free — whose imaginary
friend is an African American Jesus with a decidedly 20th-centruy mojo
(played by a beautifully deadpan-beatific David Westley Skillman) —
is actually his/her own kin. In this inspired poetical-historical counter-narrative
from Bay Area playwright Marcus Gardley, Greek mythology, African American
folklore, personal family history, and Christian theology are all drawn
irresistibly along in a great sweep of wild and incisive humor, passion,
pathos and rousing gospel music as buoyant and wide as the Mississippi
— or rather Miss Sippi (the impressive Nicole C. Julien), personification
of the mighty and flighty river, backed by a chorus of blue-gowned sisters
(Rebecca Frank, Halili Knox, Erica Richardson). The Cutting Ball–Playwrights
Foundation coproduction, lovingly directed by Amy Mueller, sports exquisite
design touches from Cutting Ball regulars like Michael Locher, whose gorgeous
plank-wood set serves as the ideal platform for a work both magnificently
simple and eloquently evocative.
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