Aleshea Harris would likely accept that On Sugarland is best regarded as a fantasy or a dream. An avoidance of stark reality marks her often immediately involving works.
Indeed, On Sugarland begins in surreal fashion when 14-year-old Sadie (Kiki Layne) steps into designer Amith Chandrashaker’s solo light and declares, “I can make the dead walk.” Hard not to pay attention to a play beginning that way. Explaining how she does her unlikely magic, she ventures into what she knows of her great-great-great grandmother, who wasn’t a slave but had to earn her living as if she still was.
When Sadie finishes, she walks into action where an octet composed of men, women and other contemporary genders has hustled into view. Billed in the program as The Rowdy, the volatile members throw something of a rave. On Sugarland proper gets underway.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Lights fully up. Adam Rigg’s two-and-a-half-level set takes focus. The primary playing area is a raised semicircle on which a barber chair sits off-center, separated from a hut decorated with all sorts of random objects that perhaps conjures a pop-up shop run by someone practicing Santeria. Above and reached by a staircase on the side is a row of windows, indicating three trailers, winding around the main area at stage level is a railroad track that implies more prominent populations elsewhere.
What has been created represents a remote cul-de-sac in the South during a never-specified war. At one point Johnny Carson is mentioned, suggesting the war could be raging in the host-comic’s 1962-92 Tonight Show years. Were this week’s spectators to think Russia-Ukraine conflict, Harris probably wouldn’t object. Such a choice would fit her sense of timelessness.
Of the Sugarland inhabitants Harris features six, intermittently joined by the often vocal yet barely speaking Rowdy. Aside from Sadie, they’re sisters Evelyn (Stephanie Berry) and Tisha (Lizan Mitchell), Saul (Billy Eugene Jones), his son Addis (Caleb Eberhardt), and Odella (Adeola Role), an unhappy single woman sometimes seen working in her kitchen.
Through the lengthy two-act play, Harris jostles any number of scenes to display how the characters are attempting to make something meaningful of their obscure lives; this cul-de-sac possibly emblematic of Black lives mattering everywhere. Saul, caught up in an enlisted soldier’s existence, consistently and rigorously attempts to turn Addis, a barber, into good Army material. Evelyn dresses up in finery (costumer Qween Jean takes care of that) to demonstrate she remains devoted to honoring the now. She’s embarrassed by Tisha’s letting herself go, a development Tisha doesn’t mind at all. Odella hides her frustrations until she no longer wants to. Sadie worries them all because she doesn’t, and won’t, speak. They’re not privy to her (interior?) monologues.
Several group sequences crop up, including not one but two funerals. To be more precise, one is a pre-funeral. (Isn’t that an uncommon, if completely rare, sight?) The more or less standard funeral is for Iola, Sadie’s warrior mother, whose body was never found. The pre-funeral is for Saul, who longs to know how he’s been perceived before he actually kicks the bucket. Sitting under a sheet, he enjoys the rite as the attendees briefly express their feelings and sometimes touch him—all of it keenly directed by Whitney White, as he does throughout.
Saul’s enjoyment lasts until this somehow delightful pre-funeral gets out of hand. So much of On Sugarland does get out of hand, some of it for reasons germane to the script, but too often for reasons undercutting the script. Because Harris seems intent on arranging the scenes disjointedly, she challenges viewers to follow them. Some will. Others may not, deciding that the script doesn’t add up to—this isn’t necessarily a defeating outcome—much more than occasional fascinating talk (Sadie’s asides, for instance) and agile directing and ensemble acting.
Piecing together revelations about Saul’s true military past and how an injured foot ties into it can be confusing. What’s at the bottom of Odella’s eventual behavior isn’t clear. (Is that a primal scream she emits?) Perhaps Harris doesn’t intend Odella’s outbursts and sudden attraction to Addis to be shaky, but that’s no help. Also, having actors sporadically break the fourth wall is more jarring than Harris wants.
During On Sugarland, the words “You’re gonna look for me and I’ll be gone” are sung, evidently borrowing from Fats Domino. Of Harris’ play, too often you’re gonna look for it and it’s elusive.
On Sugarland opened March 3, 2022, at New York Theatre Workshop and runs through March 20. Tickets and information: nytw.org
