Review - The Red Letter Plays

Don't tell anybody, but I've never seen a play by Suzan-Lori Parks.  I've read most of them, but have never seen any staged.  That's just nuts. I knew that had to change - I'm still kicking myself for missing the recent revival of Venus, but I knew that come hell or high water, I was NOT missing The Red Letter Plays, F*cking A and In the Blood.  Yeah, yeah, I know, I don't need that cutesy symbol in one of the play titles, but hey.  I'm from Ohio.  Even typing a curse word on certain days is a chore...

Because Frank Wood was one of the actors announced for In the Blood (and he is one of my very favorite stage actors), I bought that ticket first.  Then I imagined that I should see the plays one after the other, to get the full effect.  Not necessarily the actual next day, but close.  Of course, F*cking A didn't have very many tickets left, so I ended up getting that ticket for the matinee the day after I saw In the Blood.  May I say it was quite an overwhelming experience to see these two plays back-to-back.  An overwhelming, wonderful, theatrical, human experience.  I wouldn't change a thing.  (I guess I should now put in my standard reminder that spoilers will probably follow.)

I knew tangentially that both plays are 'riffs' (Parks' word) on Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter - what serious reader hasn't read this book at some point in their life?  What woman hasn't been warned of transgressing with the thought of a literal or symbolic scarlet "A" on her chest?  Needless to say, the ideas in that book put your mind in a certain place; well, at least they put MY mind in a certain place, and it was from that place I saw The Red Letter Plays.  I was appalled, devastated, exhilarated and amazed throughout the viewing of both pieces - these are exactly the plays I needed to see right now.  I felt powerless, enraged, emboldened, and understood.  Incredible.

In the Blood is about Hester, a single mother of five children, who all have different fathers.  Hester is naive and illiterate, fiercely loves her children, but is exhausted to the verge of collapse.  She knows that her life (or the lives of her children) can't end well, but she still has hope she can change things.  She reaches out to two fathers of her children for help, but of course, they won't.  In fact, all of the men in her life exploit Hester and her innate goodness.  Each character has a monologue talking about how they took advantage of her, but how she deserved it.  The monologues are chilling and scary, and oh so sad.  Like Hester, you know the play can't end well, but still you root for something positive to happen to someone. And when it doesn't, you're stunned and not stunned all at the same time.  

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

The powerlessness of women, the lack of support for single mothers, and an uncaring bureaucracy all make the experience of watching In the Blood completely timely and timeless.  The acting is all superb; the actors doubling as Hester's children and as the exploitative adults gives each performer double opportunities to shine.  The set is incredible - it's a curved wall, kind of like a skateboard ramp - and it's a metaphor for Hester's life in that you can throw yourself up and try to reach the top, but you will always slide back down.  Brilliant.

The next day, I saw F*cking A in the matinee performance (I'll talk about the matinee crowd in my seat neighbor report below).  I think it was good to see them that close together, because my ear was already in tune with Parks' language and I could get right in.  Though F*cking A is stylistically quite different from In the Blood - In the Blood is rather like a Greek tragedy, whereas F*cking A is kind of a mishmash of a Brechtian musical and a Jacobean revenge play.  You want to buy tickets now, don't you?!  DO IT!

F*cking A tells the story of another Hester, this time it's Hester Smith, who is branded with the "A" in the title, but not because she's an adulterer (like in The Scarlet Letter), but because she's an abortionist.  When her son was sent to prison as a young child, Hester was given the choice to either go to prison as well, or take the job as the abortionist, which would pay her money that she could use to buy back her son's freedom.  So she has been doing that job for 30 years when the play begins.

All Hester wants is to get her son out of prison, but she is also obsessed with getting revenge on the person she blames for his being in prison - the First Lady of the town.  She'll honestly do whatever it takes to achieve her goals, no matter how grisly or irredeemable.  F*cking A is dark dark dark, with fatal inevitability hanging over it, though there is also a lot of humor (one monologue in particular is truly riotous) and really terrific songs, in a Brecht/Weill vein, that move the story forward beautifully.  All of the music and lyrics were also written by Parks.  Oh, and another fascinating textual choice?  On occasion, the women speak in "Talk," another language, (which we see translated in subtitles projected on the top of the stage) to each other.  It's yet another way that Parks is dramatically showing us the plight of women and what women do to subvert and survive - "Talk" is mainly used when speaking about gynecological or "women's issues," which I thought was just brilliant.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

Like In the Blood, the acting in F*cking A is sublime - Christine Lahti is fantastic as Hester, who could easily become one-note in her lust for revenge, but she is also funny, tender and strong, even when being defeated.  And Brandon Victor Dixon is simply sublime as her son, now known as Monster, thanks to the evil he's done during his time in prison.  His song/solo towards the end of the play is truly magnificent, as he tries to explain how he became the man he is today.

Again, with women's reproductive rights and agency over their own bodies under constant threat, F*cking A is so timely, it's kind of scary.  And it's scary in and of itself because of what happens to these people.  But it also seems like a scary timeless fairy tale or myth.  It is of that time, but it is of all time.  I loved it, obviously.  I loved both plays and am really glad I decided to see them one right after the other.  But I don't think you have to do that to enjoy yourself.   

Now, at long last: seat neighbor reports!  At In the Blood, I was in the balcony, with quite a few patrons of an advanced age. I probably brought the average age up there down to 70. There was one couple who kept yelling "MARILYN!" down to the main floor, but if it was Marilyn, she never answered them, to their frustration, and the couple next to me was more interested in the two glasses of wine, EACH, that they brought to their seats with them.  I was ever so afraid I was going to be wearing that wine.  Thankfully, no spilling.  Oh, and for some reason, folks in the front row of the main floor needed to keep their phones on.  That light was driving me nuts.  Plus it was hot as Hades in there.  I wonder if that was deliberate.  Thank heavens the play was amazing.

school group!

At F*cking A, there was a school group there of teens.  They were very well-behaved and got into the play from the start.  At the end, one of them cried (in her outdoor voice), "Oh, no, don't do that!!"  But she was so into it, it was sweet.  The woman to my right could not understand that F7 was NOT the seventh seat in the row (odd numbers, don't you know), so she kept wandering around.  The couple to my left kept arguing about who goes to matinees anymore?  The husband said everyone was retired.  The wife said, no, everyone here can't be retired.  The husband said everyone was.  The wife said, "This girl next to me can't be retired."  The husband said, "Ask her."  The wife said, "I'M NOT ASKING HER."  The husband said, "Fine, then, I'm right."  So the wife tapped my arm and asked me "Are you retired?"  I said, no, just on a long lunch break.  She said, "I didn't think so, you don't have gray hair."  I said, actually, I do, see?  And we all had a good laugh.   

Before the play started, a woman helped her guest (husband? brother? couldn't tell) take a pill because his hands were shaking.  I'm guessing the pill didn't last long enough, because after the intermission, he moved over into an empty seat and had tremors throughout the whole second act.  I felt sorry for him, but he WAS distracting, I have to admit.  Other people were not so nice to keep quiet - a woman sitting in that same row kept asking him to sit still.  Clearly, he couldn't.  It was sad and was a little bit of a downer at the end of an already devastatingly sad play.  It didn't stop me from sobbing at the end of the play, though.  Sobbing.  And the wife who asked me if I was retired?  She patted my arm in sympathy as she got up to leave.

That's what I'll take with me from these plays.  Yes, the life of a woman, most especially a woman of color, is generally hard and we all have to pay a price for love or passion or sacrifice, but women will rally.  Women will stand together.  And thank heavens there's a woman like Suzan-Lori Parks to write it all down.