In Charly Evon Simpson’s sandblasted, Rolonda Watts plays Adah. Here, including the lack of capital letters, is the character description in the script: “older black woman. she is somewhere between 100 and 200 or between 40 and 90. no one knows. she is like oprah when oprah shares pictures of her veggies on Instagram and you wonder if she went out and tended to the garden herself or if she has folks who do it for her. then again, she’s not like oprah at all.”
It turns out that this brand of whimsical writing marks Simpson’s entire work. If a theatergoer enjoys this sort of poetical language, language that lights neither here nor there but seems to light everywhere and nowhere—then the all-small-letters sandblasted could be just the thing. If, however, this kind of uninterrupted backing-and-forthing has the effect on a ticket buyer of, at best, mounting annoyance, sandblasted won’t add up to a satisfying time.
To Simpson’s immediate credit, her intentions are valiant—perhaps misguidedly valiant—but valiant all the same. She is concerned about the position of Black women in contemporary society and worried about whether the seemingly unchanging situation can be ameliorated for all and not the only few who may rise to, say, Supreme Court prominence.
To make her committed point(s), she introduces Angela (Brittany Bellizeare) and Odessa (Marinda Anderson), the former short and feisty, the latter tall and lithe. She introduces them on a beach that set designer Matt Sanders has placed gently curving sand dunes backed by a curved wall with three entrances and under a ceiling of puffy Giovanni Battista Tiepolo clouds. (For any beach lover the prospect is instantly enticing.)
Angela and Odessa befriend each other out of a shared need. They’ve come to the secluded spot to figure out how they can find not only solace for their shared predicament but, more immediately, to stop a scarifying affliction: They are slowly losing body parts, Odessa holding in her right hand the left arm that just dropped from her shoulder.
The two are also hoping to locate the above-mentioned Adah, the ageless figure whom they suspect will have answers to their problems. Or not, as playwright Simpson might put it. Which begins a series of shortish scenes featuring three, two, or one of them contending with their troubles as well as with the elements. (Lighting designer Stacey Derosier sees to their being clouded over a time or two.) There is a fourth figure, Jamal (Andy Lucien), whose significance is difficult to pinpoint, although he does appear once as a bartender and serves a drink.
The longest in-one sequence is given to Adah, who explains that the young women see her as an auntie; and she has things to say about, among many other topics, her breasts and whether anyone will get to see them.
So, the scenes tag along with Angela and Odessa importuning Adah to guide them to the light, once or twice threatening to quit the journey when Adah has apparently abandoned them. As some of the earlier scenes crop up, Angela and Odessa—in attractive outfits costumer Montana Levi Blanco pulls out—appear with bandages on parts of their bodies. Once, Angela has a bandage across the bridge of her nose, as if she’s had to sew it back on.
But then, wonder of wonders, the entire losing body parts riff evaporates. Angela and Odessa become whole and stay that way. Huh? Does Adah somehow heal them, nonetheless leaving them still at sixes and sevens. Does the disappearing-appendages analogue to the women’s plight remain important to Simpson? Whatever, she just keeps the scenes going with no drama accruing—just repetition, just more of the capricious same.
For longer than might be expected, it’s fun watching sandblasted. For that, Simpson has director Summer L. Williams and the actors to thank—kiss the hem of their garments might be more appropriate. Longtime television personality Watts is so deft in a dazzling gown that she does marvels with her big monologue. (How long can it have taken her to memorize?)
From start to finish Bellizeare and Anderson perform like a pair of longtime BFFs. The fun they look to be having with each other—their expressions kaleidoscoping, their arms waving—is so infectious that they keep the audience plugging for Angela and Odessa long past the time the perplexed ladies indulge in the repetitive discussions.
For some reason, 2021-22 is turning out to be a banner theater season for Samuel Beckett and his influence. No fewer than three recent productions have tipped their battered cap to him: Pass Over, Tambo & Bones, and now sandblasted. In each, two somewhat unmoored figures, very like Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon, show up in offbeat landscapes waiting for something to change their distrait circumstances. In sandblasted after initially bursting from two mounds of sand in an echo of Winnie in Beckett’s Happy Days, Angela and Odessa even gab about waiting.
But whereas in Waiting for Godot Godot never arrives, his sandblasted counterpart Adah does, and it looks as if she will have a similar downbeat effect. But minor concluding spoiler alert: This may not be the ultimate solidarity future Simpson sees for Black women. What does unfold, in this coproduction from Vineyard Theatre and WP Theater, is something audiences may feel is well worth the, uh, wait.
sandblasted opened February 27, 2022, at the Vineyard Theater and runs through March 13. Tickets and information: vineyardtheatre.org
