Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Suzan-Lori Parks’s episodic, music-filled PLAYS FOR THE PLAGUE YEAR thoughtfully relives a fraught time

• By drediman
• April 19, 2023
• No Comments

Last night, Suzan-Lori Parks’s Plays for the Plague Year opened Off-Broadway at the Public Theater. The aptly-named work – which originally premiered at the revered downtown theater last fall but was ironically cut short when Parks herself was struck down with Covid – was written by the playwright (a Pulitzer Prize-winner for Topdog/Underdog, which also premiered at the Public and was searingly revived earlier this season on Broadway) over the course of the fraught days of the pandemic – from March 2020 through April 2021, to be precise – during which she instinctually penned a brief play per day, effectively documenting the strange times and processing her own unsettled feelings.

By its very concept, the autobiographical piece is episodic in nature, and it thoughtfully captures the confusion and disorientation ushered in by the lockdown and ensuing social upheaval. In hindsight, the events that transpired that fateful year – especially when experienced together, as it is in Plays for the Plague Year – were overwhelming. To Parks’s credit, the music-filled work consciously downplays the melodrama, resulting in an experience that’s more accessible and manageable than one would expect. Thankfully, the short, bite-sized plays that comprise the final product have been prudently cherry-picked and written with clear-eyed efficiency. There’s also sufficient variety in her cornucopia of vignettes – in length, genre, perspectives, levels of mundanity, even quality – to keep audiences engaged for three eventful hours.

In an unorthodox move, the decision was made to mount the show at Joe’s Pub, a cabaret venue typically reserved for brief stints by nightlife artists like Joey Arias, (Lady) Rizo, and Justin Vivian Bond. It was an inspired move, which gives director Niegel Smith’s fast-paced production – which is peppered with surprisingly rich and eclectic songs by Parks – an intimacy and immediacy that otherwise would have been more difficult to achieve in a more conventional theater space. Indeed, there is a communal atmosphere that pervades the evening, which is made all the more palpable by the honest and approachable performances delivered by the playwright and her hardworking ensemble cast.

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PLAYS FOR THE PLAGUE YEAR
Off-Broadway, Play
The Public Theater
3 hours (including one intermission)
Through April 30