Susan Lori Parks’ IN THE BLOOD: A THINK TWICE REVIEW

Review of Signature’s IN THE BLOOD by Susan Lori Parks

Susan Lori Parks, IN THE BLOOD and FUCKING A are The Red Letter Plays, riffs on The Scarlet Letter

If you haven’t seen Susan Lori Parks’ IN THE BLOOD, it is time.  To go.  The Signature Theatre has launched a powerful and very timely revival of this important play.   IN THE BLOOD is a riff on Nathanial Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.   It is that rare play that packs both an emotional and intellectual wallop.   A motherly one.   Somehow it  comes off as both timeless and composed from today’s news.

IN THE BLOOD was written twenty years ago and first performed at the Public Theater in 1999.  It is partly a conversation between authors from different eras.  Parks today and Hawthorne in 1850.  It is also a fierce indictment of an ageless problem.  False morality that serves opportunism.

Parks’ play takes place in New York, instead of The Scarlet Letter’s Salem.  IN THE BLOOD  presents the life of Hester, La Negrita, a modern take on the novel’s protagonist Hester Prynne.  BLOOD’s Hester is a mother of five.  Each child with a different father, each neglecting father somewhere else as the heroine struggles to feed her family.  Hester and her children have taken up shelter under a bridge. 

From a THINK TWICE DRAMA perspective, IN THE BLOOD is stunningly crafted and worthy of a playwright’s study for its stark and poetic use of language.  A two-hour, no-intermission performance never seemed to drag.  This,  even though it is clear from the beginning that Hester’s story won’t end well.  The fascination is in the How and the Why, not the What’s Next.

IN THE BLOOD is a sister-play to FUCKING A, also a riff on The Scarlet Letter.  These “sisters” are currently running in the same theater complex. In fact, for the first time at the Signature Theatre two plays by the same author are being performed simultaneously.  As curtain time nears, you can feel the excitement of this rich theatrical reciprocity.  It is one of those “Yeah, this is why I’m in New York” moments.

It took inspiration and dedication for Susan Lori Parks (SLP) to write these plays.  She says that she found inspiration while talking and singing and paddling a canoe with a friend in Nantucket. It was early in the morning and she said, in jest,

I’m going to write a riff on The Scarlet Letter and I’m going to call it FUCKING A.

What initially seemed hilarious began to sink in as a worthy project idea as SLP and the friend canoed to shore.

Parks followed through with her conviction to read The Scarlet Letter.  She then wrote numerous drafts trying to discover the story, thinking in musical terms, wanting to write with Hawthorne’s “chords.”  She wrote more drafts, eventually deleting a 150 page draft in which only the title, FUCKING A, felt right.

Then from all of this hard work came a William Faulkner-like clairvoyance.  A voice in her head telling her the play’s story.

A woman with five children by five different lovers, that’s your play, and the children and adults in the play are played by the same adult actors.

Ironically what had survived from the earlier drafts, the title, no longer seemed right for this play.  And so came IN THE BLOOD.

The cast of six, five of which double as adults and kids, is superb.  The lead Hester, played by Saycon Sengbloh, brings marvelous complexity to the mother role. The Welfare Lady/ Bully is Jocelyn Bioh; Chili/ Jabber, Michael Braun; Reverend D./ Baby, Russell G. Jones; Amiga Gringa/ Beauty, Ana Reeder; and The Doctor/ Trouble, Frank Wood.  Each of these five doubling actors shifts easily and idiosyncratically from child to adult and back.

Cast for IN THE BLOOD By Susan Lori Parks
Directed By Sarah Benson
Photo by Joan Marcus

For aspiring playwrights, I think the play’s origin and creation are instructive.  Inspiration was vital to the process, but BLOOD wasn’t written on sheer adrenaline. It took dedication and a second wind of inspiration and then more dedication, an ebb and flow of hard work and creative juice.  To create drama at this level—IN THE BLOOD was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1999—the author has seemingly brought the full extent of her artist powers into this  subject.

All playwrights should rejoice in the freeing of theatrical boundaries that the innovations of SLP’s work has brought to a wide audience.  Because of its complex tone, the careful layering of humor and sorrow, IN THE BLOOD never feels like a  skit.  Even though it is written in minimalist jargon.  And it never feels redundant.  Hester’s story is revealed through the wise use of repetition with variation.  It feels like something we should have known all along.  And do, deep in our hearts.

IN THE BLOOD is playing through October 8, 2017 at the Signature Theatre, 480 West 42^nd Street, NYC. . . . More on this play  to follow.