The Red Letter Plays: In the Blood

The American people, still recovering from the shock of the election of real estate billionaire Donald J. Trump and the rise of alt-right zealotry, are being confronted with some of the greatest socioeconomic woes the nation has ever faced. A shell of its former self, countrymen are witnessing the erasure of the middle class, a surge in poverty percentages and the marooning of its most educated faction: black women. Directed with austere restraint by Obie winner Sarah Benson (Artistic Director of Soho Rep and visionary behind acclaimed productions "An Octoroon" and "Blasted") under the billing "The Red Letter Plays: In The Blood," Suzan-Lori Parks' incendiary 1999 drama receives a lukewarm revival at Off Broadway's Signature Theatre Company, which is a shame considering its one of the most urgent plays of our time.

"In The Blood," a theatrical riff on "The Scarlet Letter," Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 Colonial-era historical fictional novel, similar to its predecessor (Jo Bonney's stilted and frostbitten "The Red Letter Plays: Fucking A"), takes place in no particular area, at no particular time, but you get the sense that this play could take place in New York City or Los Angeles. While the show aborts the use of Jacobean revenge tragedy or makeshift skiffle bands with diegetic song fare that tows the line of pretension, Parks' additional elements of Bertolt Brecht's distancing effect continues to result in some of the most wildly uneven outings in recent memory. While "Fucking A" offends with a nearly sociopathic in-yer-face banality, "In The Blood" is the equivalent of dramaturgical Ambien, forcing otherwise engaged theatregoers into a somnambulist stupor.

Like all heroines in Parks' work, tragedy tailgates Hester La Negrita, the illiterate and impoverished mother of five, each of which are the product of five different partners. Performed with dexterously disquieted incandescence by Saycon Sengbloh, the protagonist of arguably one of Parks' greatest works, the story follows Hester as she and her family live under a bridge, where garbage falls from the sky, bringing a trash compactor to mind. At the start of the show, the word "slut" is etched in graffiti onto a curved wall. A skillfully and subversively designed set by Louisa Thompson accentuates the illusion of the wall, itself impossible to climb atop, as both a symbol of her struggle ascending out of destitution with the level of decadence her pursuers are willing to go to keep her there. It is also a reminder of the simple joys Hester wants for herself, with the steep curved wall being used as a playground for Hester's spawn, all of whom are making the best of a bleak situation. If it were not for pride, with Hester refusing to take her family to a homeless shelter, even after she concedes to the cul-de-sac of life, perhaps there would be a happy ending to this play that begins on the bottom and reaches new lows.

Performed by supporting cast members that double as Hester's rambunctious ankle biters and the so-called adults who bring about her ruin, the action begins when Amiga Gringa (played by Ana Reeder, who doubles as the sensitive Beauty), Hester's baby-selling streetwalker best friend, advises her to seek financial assistance from the fathers of her children. Only when she reaches out to the men she is sure fathered the children, she can't bring herself to reveal them to the matronly Welfare Lady (played by a fantastic Jocelyn Bioh, who doubles as the observant Bully), a social worker who passes more judgment than a court appointed judge. A roadside Doctor (played by Frank Wood, who doubles as the hell-raising middle son Trouble) believes a hysterectomy would save Hester from herself. Reverend D. (played by Russell G. Jones, who doubles as Baby), the father of her youngest, runs a street-side practice on a soapbox open-air preaching. Chilli (played by Michael Braun, who doubles as smarter-than-he-lets-on Jabber), her first love who fathered of her eldest child before skipping town and disappearing, wants to go back to the way things were before.

The letter A, which is essential to the Hawthorne's novel, is two-fold here: The uneducated but streetwise Hester can barely pen the first letter of the alphabet and she is often the victim of the very people she confides in, serial adulterers whom ultimately take advantage of her for their spoils. But surely, that's one opinion, right?

Throughout the play, each of these five "grown-ups" provide insight and give testimony in the form of a soliloquy in which they illuminate and interrogate their own exploitative relationships with Hester, for whom docility is habitual impulse. Called "confessions," or rather twisted rationalizations, fashioned a device to elevate themselves as upstanding citizens with outstanding moral fiber and Hester, the harlot. As if on trial, The Doctor admits that in an effort to pull him out of despair for being alone, Hester became intimate with him. The Welfare Lady affirms that she used Hester to help fix her marriage and expand her sexual horizons, with Hester becoming her first threesome experience. Amiga Gringa professes that she conned Hester into partnering with her for a sexual experience with clients in order to make a huge payout. Reverend D divulges that, "Suffering is an enormous turn-on," disclosing that her quandary ultimately made him a man of God. Chilli points out that he still is a man-child lost to nostalgia.

And what does Hester think about all this? By the show's finale, we're not sure if she's furious or if she never saw a day of hope to have it in the first place. Honored as a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, "In The Blood" is a rough-cut diamond, an astonishing m�lange of unadulterated downtown theatre razzle-dazzle and pitch-black social commentary on society's oppression of the dredges of society, homeless and living in poverty, that is viscerally raw, astoundingly irreverent and unequivocally exceptional drama. Where it falls flat is the isolated, impartial and impassive directorial tone of this production, creating an effect that makes the audience less of a jury of the entire incident and more like people in transit on a crowded subway train at rush hour expected to lend their ears to panhandler. The effect never quiet skyrockets the story. Perhaps the show would have been better in the round?

Suzan-Lori Parks, the prodigious Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, despite her substantial virtuosity, has made one thing very clear within her 30-plus year career: She is addicted to exploring and even propagating black pain. But "In The Blood," an excellent script, enthralls because of its poetry (For example: the big hand coming down on Hester symbolizing the 'five fingers of death' that had a hand in her ruin). If only her residency with Signature meant superior stagecraft, which I fear is having a hand in her working being viewed as overly pretension and trivial.

"In The Blood" runs through Oct 15 at Signature Theatre, 480 W. 42nd St. For information or tickets, call 212-244-7529 or visit www.signaturetheatre.org