If you know anything about Corsicana, Texas, it’s likely one of two things: fruitcake, thanks to the 126-year-old Collin Street Bakery’s world-famous pecan-, pineapple-, cherry-, raisin-, and papaya-filled, red-tinned confection; and competitive cheerleading, due to the Netflix docuseries Cheer and its chronicles of the high-flying, high-drama Navarro College squad.
The city portrayed in Will Arbery’s Corsicana—receiving its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons—isn’t quite that colorful. No candied fruit, no human pyramids. Just four characters—some strongly and some tenuously connected—fumbling their way through life: Ginny (Amy and the Orphans’ Jamie Brewer), a 34-year-old with Down syndrome, and half-brother Christopher (Will Dagger), who are more than a bit unmoored in the wake of their mother’s death; the local librarian, Justice (Deirdre O’Connell, fresh off her best-actress Tony win for Dana H.), their close friend and honorary family member; and an enigmatic artist-slash-singer named Lot (Harold Surratt), who’s a bit unmoored himself. Oh, and ghosts. At one point, Justice’s future self, the siblings’ mom, and a dead man from Justice’s dreams are all sitting at the kitchen table. “Three ghosts? This is ridiculous,” says Ginny, who is apparently an audience mind-reader.
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
In a well-intentioned and perhaps misguided attempt to bring both Ginny and Lot out of their respective shells (“I can’t find my heart.… I can’t feel anything there,” says Ginny), Justice and Christopher hatch a plan: Lot can help the music-loving Ginny write a song. The Lot-Ginny collaboration is just a tiny thread in Arbery’s sprawling, twisty, and, regrettably, overlong drama. The best scene in Corsicana—a gorgeous, moving exchange between Justice and Ginny—is buried deep in its second half, and you’ll have to wade through many dissertations on dreams and visions and ghosts before you get there. Romantic love is “an excellent idea in theory, but put into practice it seems nearly impossible,” reasons Justice. “It messed me up wholesale last time. It almost killed me. And it wasn’t real, anyway, none of it was real, it was all a brutality and a lie.” Ginny, meanwhile, is as hopelessly romantic as Justice is cynical. She loves seeing people in love: “It’s my favorite thing,” she declares. “And you have to love with a special heart, okay?” In the playwright’s note, Arbery tells us that his older sister Julia is one of his “favorite people,” and that’s clear in Corsicana and in Brewer’s sharp, easily comedic performance. Ginny’s exasperated “THE INTERNET STOPPED WORKING. Oh, I hate this” is all of us.
At one point, Justice is holding a manuscript, the plot of which she attempts to summarize for Christopher. A few excerpts: “It’s about family. It’s about the dead. It’s about ghosts. It’s about gentle chaos. It’s about contracts of the heart.” If someone asks what Corsicana is about, you might point them to this monologue—a beautiful bit of abstract art thanks to O’Connell’s comforting presence and mesmerizing delivery. In other words, don’t expect another Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Arbery’s fiery 2019 drama about conservative Catholic college alumni arguing over politics. That play was all talk and issues; Corsicana is more thought and silence.
Not surprisingly, director Sam Gold, who loves a pregnant pause, leans into Corsicana’s many quiet moments, causing more than a few…pacing…problems. A bizarrely clunky rotating set also slows things down unnecessarily, disrupting the mood at each (literal) turn. The actors eventually bring us back in, but it’s a detriment to a play that relies so much on aura and feeling.
Corsicana opened June 22, 2022, at Playwrights Horizons and runs through July 10. Tickets and information: playwrightshorizons.org
