Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The future looks grim in Sarah Mantell’s poetically wrought new play IN THE AMAZON WAREHOUSE PARKING LOT

• By drediman
• October 31, 2024
• No Comments

Opening earlier this week was Sarah Mantell’s disarming if enigmatic new play In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot, Playwrights Horizons’ main stage offering this fall. The winner of last year’s prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Off-Broadway play — which is being presented in association with Breaking the Binary Theatre — has the same apocalyptic mindset as several new works I’ve recently come across (you can read my thoughts on the current productions of The Beastiary at Ars Nova and Hothouse at Irish Arts Center here). More specifically, the speculative work depicts a group of workers at a nondescript warehouse in Wyoming who band together to stand up to the ubiquitous “corporation” that employs them.

Mantell envisions a grim future. Not only does she conjure a world where climate change is aggressively engulfing land mass and drastically changing coastlines — in the process claiming countless lives — there’s also the tyrannical rise of a far-reaching corporation, which has infiltrated almost every aspect of people’s lives, instilling fear and division in order to exact dominion over those left behind. Although some may be frustrated by the intentional vagueness of it all, I found the play to project a simultaneously poetic and vivid theatrical vision. Yes, there are obvious nods to the Oscar-winning film Nomadland, as well as the evocatively dystopian world-building of television shows like Station Eleven. But what I was most reminded of are the plays of the great Caryl Churchill — a playwright who thrives on speculating the limits of humanity in a world that’s altering faster than we realize — whose influence on In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot is paramount. To be sure, Mantell’s is a noteworthy and distinctive new voice, and I look forward to seeing what her imagination comes up with next.

Sivan Battat’s staging takes its time clarifying relationships and creating dramatic tension, allowing characters room to breathe and ample opportunity for audiences to get to know them before investing in their respective trajectories. Indeed, just like the playwright, Battat marches to the beat of their own drum, resulting in unexpected moments of beguiling poignancy. The same thing can be said of the ensemble cast, which is primarily comprised of transgender and non-binary actors, each of whom are given the spotlight at one point or another (each character is given a monologue that lays out their origin story). Each brings their own personality and cadence to their performance, imprinting their roles with their own fierce and uncompromising individualism.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

IN THE AMAZON WAREHOUSE PARKING LOT
Off-Broadway, Play
Playwrights Horizons (in association with Breaking the Binary Theatre)
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through November 17