Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s SHADOW/LAND heavy-handedly unpacks inter-generational trauma and legacy via Hurricane Katrina

• By drediman
• May 5, 2023
• No Comments

Last night, Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s shadow/land opened Off-Broadway at the Public Theatre (the play was originally released in podcast form during lockdown). Set in New Orleans during the imminent onset of Hurricane Katrina, the work depicts the tenuous relationship between Magalee and Ruth, a mother and daughter who find themselves caught off guard by the arrival of the devastating storm and trapped in their family-owned bar fighting for their survival.

The play is the 2021 Susan Blackburn Prize winning playwright’s first installment of a planned 10-play cycle chronicling the myriad of exposing and systemic problems uncovered by Hurricane Katrina. In its investigation of inter-generational trauma and legacy of a Black family, shadow/land calls to mind the works of the great August Wilson — but with a good dose of magic realism thrown in. Unfortunately, despite the palpable atmosphere conjured by director Candis C. Jones’s staging, the one-note play ultimately registers as a strained and telegraphed attempt at exploring its targeted themes.

Magalee and Ruth are respectively played by Lizan Mitchell and Joniece Abbott-Pratt, two veteran stage actresses who here resort to shouty histrionics as if to compensate for the play’s heavy handedness and lack of shape. As the Grand Marshal — the play’s spectral overseer — Christine Shepard gives a highly physical performance that infuses the play with much-needed poetry. The most impressive aspect of the production, however, is the nifty stagecraft that ingeniously recreates a bar flooding before your eyes.

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SHADOW/LAND
Off-Broadway, Play
The Public Theater
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through May 28