If you’ve heard anything about Haiti lately, chances are it’s been in the form of inflammatory Republican political rhetoric—dehumanizing lies about legal immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, that have led to bomb threats, school closures, and corrosive, all-consuming fear.
So there couldn’t be a better time for Dominique Morisseau’s thoughtful, thought-provoking Bad Kreyòl, a tribute to her father’s homeland that brings us a little bit closer to understanding the Haitian experience. Directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, the world premiere—a coproduction of the Signature Theatre, where Morisseau is wrapping up a four-play residency, and Manhattan Theatre Club, which brought her Skeleton Crew to Broadway in 2021—just opened off-Broadway at the Signature.
Those who know Morisseau’s work likely think of her three-play cycle The Detroit Project: the jazz-infused Paradise Blue, set in the rapidly gentrifying Black Bottom neighborhood in 1949; Detroit ’67, centered on the city’s historic Uprising of 1967; and Skeleton Crew, an eye-opening look at an endangered auto-stamping plant on the eve of the Great Recession. Detroit and Haiti may seem worlds away, but they’re closer than we think, as Morisseau explains in her Bad Kreyòl program note: “One black city. One black country. Both independent in mind, body and politic. Both ostracized from the rest of the largely white and affluent neighbors. Both punished by the statewide and global powers for its black independent radical liberation.”
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
Morisseau takes us to Haiti for a family reunion of sorts: Haitian American Simone (Kelly McCreary, who recently wrapped a nine-season run on Grey’s Anatomy) hasn’t been there since she was 12; she’s visiting, at their grandmother’s request, and hoping to get to know her Haitian-born boutique owner cousin Gigi (Eclipsed Tony nominee Pascale Armand). “I’ve gone with Gramere to the states to visit many times. But it does not happen in the reverse much,” Gigi explains to Pita (Jude Tableau), who has lived with and helped the family as long as Simone can remember. (“The whole servant thing is kinda weird,” Simone protests. Gigi is not having it. “Oh Jesus, servant thing?” Gigi huffs. “You just got here. It’s too fast to be stuck up. Wait a week at least.”)
There are many things Simone doesn’t know, or simply forgets. (For instance, water use is restricted to certain hours of the day.) And Gigi doesn’t understand Simone’s look (wearing her hair natural… “on purpose?” Gigi asks), or her interest in their family’s past. “Listen, don’t go trying to drudge up ghosts of earthquakes and hurricanes past. We do not dwell here. We move on,” Gigi tells her. Simone is open and curious; Gigi is closed-off and careful. The warm, welcoming Pita is all of those things, as well as an amateur biographer who can fill in the blanks in Simone’s family history. Dictator Baby Doc—né Jean-Claude Duvalier, or “the Baby Fat One,” as Pita calls him—had Pita’s “entire family in his clutch. If not for your famni [family],” he tells Simone, “for allowing my parents to send me here as ti moun [a child], raise me to study and work, there is no telling what fate I would suffer.” He also proves to be Simone’s connection to an NGO that teaches trades to former Haitian sex workers, because, as Simone explains, she doesn’t want to be “just some tourist in Haiti.”
One late scene—Gigi’s trade with an international client, Thomas (Andy Lucien)—veers a bit off track, seemingly designed almost solely to educate the audience on Haitian history. She thinks he’s exploiting his own people, and wants a better deal for her client, designer/seamstress Lovelie (Fedna Jacquet). “Haiti has always been exploited. By governments. By France. By the U.S. By the free world. By business. By the whites. By everyone,” Thomas tells Gigi. “There has been nothing but internationale handprint on the state of our affairs since the days of 1804 and our liberation.” They engage in a lively debate but, in all honestly, we’re eager circle back to Gigi’s boutique—the pop-of-color rotating set is designed by Jason Sherwood—and see if the cousins can become, as Gramere wanted, friends.
Bad Kreyòl opened Oct. 28, 2024, at the Pershing Square Signature Center and runs through Dec. 1. Tickets and information: signaturetheatre.org
