Suzan-Lori Parks penned The America Play years ago, but everything she’s written might fairly be titled “The America Play.” From In the Blood and Topdog/Underdog to Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 and 3), she has become our history’s de facto bard, exploring the ways in which our ancestors’ follies are ignored or reiterated (or both) by us here on the ground.
Her most ambitious subject to date animates her most enjoyable play to date, which made its debut last year at Minneapolis’s Guthrie. Sally & Tom are, of course, Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson, whose sub-rosa, were they-or-weren’t-they relationship has long and tantalizingly complicated the popular understanding of slave/slaver politics. (Though much has been definitively sorted out by Annette Gordon-Reed’s magisterial Pulitzer honoree The Hemingses of Monticello, which has to have been a major Parks source.)
We meet the protagonists at a key turning point. Having wrapped up his tenure as Minister to France, Jefferson (Matilda Tony winner Gabriel Ebert) longs to retire to his Virginia homestead, until President Washington insists that he accept the post of Secretary of State. Moving to the New York seat of government will require breaking up his household, and enormous debts have to be repaid. Will Sally (an exquisite Sheria Irving) be parted from her restless brother James (Alano Miller), whose manumission has been promised? What will become of all the families that keep Monticello running, under the lash? In this, as on most occasions related by historians, “TJ” stubbornly, airily keeps his own counsel.
[Read Sandy MacDonald’s ★★★★★ review here.]
Suddenly we are made to realize that we’ve been watching a play in the making, the work of a downtown collective known as Good Company. The troupe boasts a track record as political provocateurs with such sensations as “Patriarchy on Parade,” and “Listen Up, Whitey, Cause It’s All Your Fault.”
Now, director Mike (Ebert) and his romantic partner, playwright Luce (Irving) see a road to the big time with Luce’s take on Sally and Tom, “The Pursuit of Happiness.” A deep-pocketed producer, combined with the TV and movie fame of company member Kwame a/k/a “K-Dubb” (Miller), could bump up company visibility at the drop of a periwig. If, that is, offstage pressures and antagonisms can be kept at bay.
As one who founded or joined several such companies over the years, I can attest to the verisimilitude of much of Good Company’s backstage buzz: “Break, 7 minutes” greeted by a chorus of “Thank you, 7”; puttering with lighting instruments or costume pieces; popping out to vape or grab coffee; pausing between agent calls and running lines to debate the merits and theme of the current project (also the size of their roles). More than just a beehive, a theater company is a nation in miniature, individuals going about their business while simultaneously comprising a distinctive group culture. Director Steve H. Broadnax III (Thoughts of a Colored Man) brings it alive seemingly effortlessly, and presents Parks’s parallels between the two narratives with delicacy.
In one key respect, though, the modern story fails to convince. Luce has given James Hemings a pivotal moment to tell off Jefferson in a scathing tirade. Mr. Moneybags has threatened to pull out because of the incendiary speech, while for Kwame it’s the “money” moment he won’t give up. With such a tempest brewing, any playwright worth their salt would move heaven and earth to placate both angel and star with endless rewrites in search of a compromise. What transpires dovetails with the Jefferson story, but I fear it leaves Sally & Tom – not to mention “The Pursuit of Happiness” – shakier at the eleventh hour than they need to be.
That aside, the production is stylish and beautifully acted. Costume designer Rodrigo Muñoz, in particular, wittily guides our eyes among the period, the modern day and moments of déshabillé in between. There’s nary a weak link among the players, though standouts are Irving; Ebert, whose lengthy direct address as TJ tries to explain himself but only deepens his mystery; Miller, delivering his indictment with all cylinders firing; and Kristolyn Lloyd, riveting as the weary raisonneuse of both time periods.
Parks manages to locate touch points between the 18th and 21st centuries in ways that audiences should find provocative and even thrilling. Gently chiding TJ for hiding his intentions, Sally reminds him, “We build our castle on a foundation of your promises.” Well, isn’t that the foundation of the nation? The structure Jefferson et al so hopefully wrought has lived up to its potential for few if any of its citizens, just as Mike and Luce are far from firmly establishing their personal and professional relationship as a Good Company. The promise of full freedom is always just out of reach, yet the attempt to shape our reality to the ideal must be never-ending. We hold that truth to be self-evident.
Sally & Tom opened April 16, 2024, at the Public Theater and runs through May 26. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
