Not to dissuade anyone from seeing Lincoln Center Theater’s premiere of creation stories and all the important importants, but to appreciate fully Mfoniso Udofia’s play, it really, really helps to be a millennial, a professional woman, a person of color, and/or somebody who experienced IVF treatments to conceive children. I am none of these. Stretches of Udofia’s complex, often lyrical, modern-day drama escaped me entirely. Whether such befuddlement stems from the limits of my boomer background or to Udofia’s magical dramaturgy, or possibly both, it is obvious much care and craft have gone into both the play and its glossy LCT3 production at the Claire Tow Theater.
In her program notes, the first-generation Nigerian American playwright tells of receiving a commission “to write exactly what I wanted.” Five years later, Udofia delivers a fancifully autobiographical story of an exceptional Black woman whose busy times as a university professor of drama are shadowed by middle-aged anxiety whether she will be able to create a child. The playwright names this character “thegrownwoman.” Essentially an extended Millennial monologue augmented by related voices – three actors total – the 95-minute drama details from morn ‘til midnight a crucial day in thegrownwoman’s life.
A nightmare evoking West African spirits awakens the protagonist who is driven rapidly through her urban existence by a nearly ceaseless inner voice. She also receives continual virtual assistance provided by Alexa and Siri and an upbeat stream of wonderfully eclectic music to help propel her through multiple activities. She tidies the house, exercises, injects herself with IVF meds, dresses, strives to write something, shops for groceries, phones her fretful mom, and teaches a mad graduate class in drama that frightens me.
Most critically, she visits a fertility clinic where the results are not promising. “I understand this cycle is the end of the road,” she bravely observes. Soon afterwards, this carefully put together individual falls apart in terrible despair.
Riding along in a shopping cart on these exhausting rounds is “littlegirl,” the sprightly nine-year-old incarnation of thegrownwoman. Arriving much later is an inspirational hip-hop deus-ex-machina in a pink pleather peekaboo catsuit known as Mister Cornell and who is magically related to the kid’s My Little Pony blanket. With lullabies and comfort food, these figures will help to steer thegrownwoman through the existential crisis she suffers over what her possible legacy might be. There is also a symbolic trombone.
The text of Udofia’s relatively direct storyline frequently is decorated with poetic language, Nigerian mythology and idioms, 1990s pop culture allusions, and much more, borne along on floods of curated music ranging from gospel and R&B to the “Jupiter” passages of “The Planets.” An extremely layered soundscape mixing these sundry compositions with various electronic, ambient and natural sounds is provided by Bailey Trierweiler & Uptown Works. Augmenting the drama even further are many still, live and moving projections of myriad images designed by Katherine Freer. They frequently appear across half a dozen screens at the rear of an expansive set designed by Jason Ardizzone-West that puts a modest helix upon a circular stage to represent the circles the protagonist runs in her daily existence.
Yes: There is a lot going on here between Udofia’s maximalist play and its accouterments in LCT3’s sumptuous, well-acted production that opened Thursday. Tamilla Woodard, the director, rolls everything out smoothly, but some of that overabundant content flies by awfully quickly for certain demographics to grasp. Fortunately for everyone in the audience, the central role of thegrownwoman is performed by Abigail C. Onwunali, who urgently and beautifully depicts her ever-striving character with an expressive face, a bold physicality, and a melodic voice. Initially hidden beneath her costume as a spooky Cousin It-like raffia bush in the opening nightmare sequence (remember that?), a fun Donnetta Lavinia Grays returns later to sing up more than one storm as a swaggering cartoon hero. Like Onwunali, a member of the recent Joe Turner’s Come and Gone company, Savannah Commodore is a natural charmer whose wide-eyed amiable child here sympathetically watches a future version of herself implode.
creation stories and all the important importants opened October 1, 2026, at the Claire Tow Theater and runs through November 1. Tickets and information: lct.org
