The dysfunctional family play is often considered the quintessential theatrical work. What else, for instance, are Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Aeschylus’ House of Atreus or William Shakespeare’s King Lear? Also true is that the dysfunctional family work can be more specifically categorized.
For example, there’s the dysfunctional-sisters play, which can even further be categorized. There’s the three-sisters version. King Lear features three sisters, as does, of course, Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Already this Broadway season there’s an outstanding four-sister version, Jez Butterworth’s The Hills of California.
Now Katori Hall brings her four-sister treatment, The Blood Quilt. In other words, any number of our dysfunctional family entries are spins on the same often explosive dynamics, and the question becomes: How effective is the spin, or does it carry too strong a we’ve-seen-it all-before hint?
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Getting to the urgent point, The Blood Quilt has the spin of a circus act where plates are dizzyingly spinning on poles held high. These particular theatrical plates get spinning when, in order of their birth to the same mother but different fathers, sisters Clementine (Crystal Dickinson), Gio (Adrienne C. Moore), Cassan (Susan Kelechi Watson), and Amber (Lauren E. Banks) convene. Also present is Cassan’s precocious 15-year-old daughter Zambia (Mirirai).
Ostensibly, they’ve gathered, as they do the first week of every May, to stitch together a quilt. It’s the family tradition. But they’re also on Adam Rigg’s comfortable set, on Kwemera Island off the Georgia coast, surrounded by mouth-watering quilts from many previous years—to revive, review, and revile past and increasingly intensifying resentments.
Predictably, the severely bruised and long-term feelings, the multiple gripes and grouses are endless. Policewoman Gio, a drinker, is the most consistently vocal and curse-bent about her bitter attitudes, among them not being their recently deceased mother’s favorite, far from it. That exalted family position goes to Amber, a Hollywood lawyer not in touch with the others often enough. She even missed the funeral and, perhaps worse, dislikes quilting.
Clementine, for her part, is the daughter who stayed home to care for Mother. (In any sibling group there’s always one to whom that duty falls, isn’t there?) She fumes in one of the breathtaking outbursts typical of Hall’s non-stop pithy dialog. Attacking the other three, she rants in part, “So don’t sit up there on that bull riding high and mighty thinking that just cause yo ass showed up at the funeral and cried and did yo little performance that you was a good daughter.”
The situation only worsens when Amber, who without the others knowing, had their mother write a will that cedes three of the daughters a legacy, nothing to Gio. For her efforts, Clementine gets the house, not a happy inheritance, since the property is in tax arrears. The only solution appears to be selling the accumulated quilts, for which, Amber insists, the Smithsonian would offer enough to clear the financial strain and then some.
Complete agreement isn’t immediate. Clementine certainly doesn’t go for it. (The many quilts displayed look to be Smithsonian worthy. No credit given but program thanks are sent to Thadine Wormley, Jacqueline Colson, Kristina Fosmire, Lisa Schloegel Peck, and the Brooklyn Quilters Guild.)
Other developments severely complicate the sisters’ contretemps, including Zambia’s lesbian coming-out. The most dramatic (spoiler straight ahead) is Amber’s disclosure that she has only recently been diagnosed with AIDS. The announcement is accepted as dire, which is curious: The Blood Quilt is set in 2015, when, presumably the condition is already eminently treatable. The discrepancy does throw the play off kilter, though not damagingly.
Another observation on Hall’s consistently absorbing close gaze at these warring sisters and niece is a preponderance of symbols. The most obvious is a brewing and eventually electrifying storm—Jiyoun Chang’s all but ever-present flashing lights and Palmer Hefferan’s all but ever-present sound. Is the cliché really necessary to underline the hurricane-like storm the sisters are themselves fomenting?
Then there are the quilts themselves made of bits and pieces of destroyed fabrics. It’s said that they’re signed in blood, which is fair enough, but compounding the blood is Amber’s cutting herself while at work. The sisters are, of course, bound by blood. Since the sisters’ home is by water, Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s projections present wild oceanfront tides, yet another comment on continually seething emotions.
Supposedly, all the above are intended to slip by unnoticed and can be excused by the beauty with which Hall orchestrates the sisters’ conflicts and attempted reconciliations. That’s as directed with such profound sleekness by Lileana Blain-Cruz and played by the actors as if they’ve been together as long as the sisters they’re representing.
The program states that Kwemera means “to last, endure, withstand.” The choice of site is Hall’s way of outlining what she hopes, even expects, sisters to do—and the play as well. The good word is that she has succeeded at writing a drama that will last, that will endure.
The Blood Quilt opened November 21, 2024, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and runs through December 29. Tickets and information: lct.org
