A terribly timely drama, In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot melds half a dozen topical issues into its story about a pack of mostly older, queer American women surviving as migrant workers during a dystopian near future: Climate catastrophe, queer relationships, crushing capitalism, systematic breakdowns, homeless seniors and domestic terrorism.
Grim doings. Yet an unexpected romance blossoms amidst this nightmare world, the drama’s seven characters are depicted as variously tough, valiant and wise souls, and the strength they derive from their forged community grows evident. Little wonder Sarah Mantell’s drama nabbed the prestigious Susan Blackburn Prize for 2023, which recognizes works by women+ playwrights. If Mantell’s mournful In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot is scarcely a crowd-pleaser, it is a sensitively crafted drama commissioned and produced by Playwrights Horizons, where its world premiere opened Monday.
Mantell structures the 95-minute play as brief scenes interspersed by short monologues from each character about their life-changing experiences. Gradually it is disclosed how several years previously some natural disaster wiped out both coasts and millions of people. Terrible storms still arise and water still rises inland. The playwright keeps these details vague and so are the specifics regarding “the corporation,” a sinister Amazon-type operation that apparently dominates what remains of society.
Bereft of loved ones and occupations by disaster, the characters survive as workers migrating from warehouse to warehouse in their vehicles as both the Orwell-like corporation and the geography expands and contracts. Communications are shot, too. Poignantly, the sole way anyone confirms what actually remains of America is by saying aloud the towns named on the packages they are shipping: “If you don’t read the labels, how will you know what’s going on out there?”
Crucial to a relationship that unexpectedly sparks between Jen (Donnetta Lavinia Grays) and Ani (Deirdre Lovejoy) are a missing best friend and a lost husband. More than once it’s sadly noted, “Everyone’s looking for someone.” Alternating with scenes inside a warehouse are others in a parking lot where the characters – who live in their vehicles – gather around a fire pit on battered lawn furniture to play party games. Led by the mischievous Sara (an especially vibrant Ianne Fields Stewart), a sweet plot to sabotage the corporation propels an increasingly bleak narrative that is relieved by a sacrificial act of love suddenly happening along the conveyor belt.
Composed mostly in relatively terse exchanges that contrast against the reflective monologues, In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot achieves its power by evoking a miserable existence and observing the ways strangers are able to endure it by bonding in familial relationships. How these survivors are variously queer, trans or whatever in nature seems nearly beside the point of depicting the kindly, hardy humanity they share in the awful face of catastrophe.
Warm, natural performances from an ensemble that also features Barsha, Pooya Mohseni, Sandra Caldwell and Tulis McCall distinguish the solid production directed by Sivan Battat, who delicately stages the play’s few tender moments. The setting designed by Emmie Finckel situates a double conveyor belt high above the action to keep a procession of brown-wrapped packages moving along (or not). A metal door at the rear of an austere warehouse interior rolls up to reveal the grubby parking lot, beyond which looms a wide vista of desolate mountains. The lighting designed by Cha See sometimes turns radiantly colorful to contrast ironically with the drama’s bleak happenings. Sound designer Sinan Refik Zafar provides a complex, often clamorous, mix of industrial and natural noise.
More literal-minded viewers may not be able to wrap their heads around the weird new world the play sketches out, but others will appreciate how the story affirms the power of love to sustain people in even the worst times imaginable.
In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot opened October 28, 2024, at Playwrights Horizons and runs through November 17. Tickets and information: playwrightshorizons.org
