Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Aleshea Harris’s sprawling ON SUGARLAND takes a surreal, poetic look at a Black community under duress

• By drediman
• March 4, 2022
• No Comments

Last night, Aleshea Harris’s On Sugarland opened Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop. There’s quite a lot to unpack in the new drama by Ms. Harris, whose revenge play Is God Is and singular What to Send Up When It Goes Down were among my most memorable theater experiences of the last decade. Broadly, her latest tells the story of a Black community under duress, its denizens struggling through a perpetual, vaguely defined war that almost daily strikes down its soldiers.

On Sugarland is sprawling, to say the least, and it exudes the heightened grandeur and weighty emotions of Greek drama (there’s even a sort of Greek chorus, appropriately called the Rowdy). As such, Ms. Harris’s characters register like archetypes rather than specific human beings, which suggests that the play’s fantasia-like landscape functions as a microcosm for Black America and the war a stand-in for our country’s race problems. It’s important to note, however, that the play eludes simple dissection. The closest comparison I can think of is gazing at a surrealist painting (think Salvador Dalí). Indeed, symbols are abound, and spelled-out meaning almost becomes secondary to the visceral impression the writing leaves behind. Ultimately, the playwright decides against providing the keys to fully unlock the mysteries of her play, which renders it simultaneously frustrating and poetically open-ended. Like the recently shuttered new musical Black No More, On Sugarland is restless and unruly, and I don’t think I’d have Ms. Harris’s work any other way.

Director Whitney White – who so memorably collaborated with Ms. Harris on What to Send Up – has given the play a visually striking, auteur-like staging designed for maximum impact. Ms. White is aided by Raja Feather Kelly’s deeply felt choreography, which contributes to the intensity of the production’s emotional punch (namely during the searing “hollering” interludes, during which the community ritualistically mourns the death of its solders). Top to bottom, the cast is sensational; their invigorating performances allow Ms. Harris’s deeply evocative language to vividly leap off of the stage.

RECOMMENDED

ON SUGARLAND
Off-Broadway, Play
New York Theatre Workshop
2 hours, 40 minutes (with one intermission)
Through March 20