Theatre in Review: Sulfur Bottom (Jerry Orbach Theatre)The dead speak in Sulfur Bottom; indeed, so voluble are they, the living struggle to get a word in edgewise. That the play's characters incessantly return from the grave, loaded with exposition to impart, does little to aid the cause of clarity. This time-jumping eco-drama has a plot so tangled that you'd need eight episodes on HBO Max to straighten it all out. Playwright Rishi Varma is profligate with twists yet stingy with the grounding details that might give the action some semblance of real life. And then there's the beached whale in the living room, who is also...well, we'll get to that. Covering four unspecified decades in an unnamed location, Sulfur Bottom focuses on a family living in an industrial park. (As far as I can tell, this is not a typical, or generally legal, practice, so if Varmak had a specific situation in mind, it would be good to know about it.) In the first scene, a large bundle occupies center stage; it is, we are told, a deer, which has kicked Fran, a young woman, in the head. Fran lives with her father, Sir Carvin (he insists on the "Sir), and Melissa, her aunt. The deer is the least of their problems: The surrounding community is impoverished, the local factory is toxic, and the house makes alarming groaning noises. Sir Cavin, who is working on adding a septic tank, is deeply attached to the property, which housed the family's previous generations. Melissa, who is alarmed, fed up, and looking for a way out, notes that the surrounding grounds are probably poisoned. "We're all going to die someday," Sir Carvin replies, sounding rather like Joni Ernst deflecting her constituents. Ninety minutes later, practically everyone is dead, which doesn't mean they're ready to surrender the stage. Maeve, Fran's adult daughter, is alive, wondering why there's a beached whale lying on the ground. Stick with me on this: The whale is also the ghost of Sir Carvin, who is soon accompanied by the shades of Fran and Melissa. It's typical of the script that, once discovered, the whale's presence is little remarked upon, even when he morphs into an unquiet spirit. Coming and going is Winter, Maeve's father, who also plays the deer in the first scene. (Remember the deer? No matter; it has no material role in the plot.) By now, we know, courtesy of Copal, a shifty banker, that the soil on which the house rests is lousy with hazardous waste. Actually, the house is gone, thanks to a series of twists involving a secret mortgage, a bombshell will, and incidents of arson and manslaughter. Even so, Mave doesn't want to budge from the spot, preferring to stick around and break bread with the dead. Some people... We've all read stories in the news about poor (often minority) communities suffering without relief from the effects of industrial pollution; it's a national scandal and worthy of rigorous dramatic investigation. Varma, however, gambles that such a situation is so familiar to the audience as to require only the sketchiest setup. But the script, which is starved for details, feels written in a kind of shorthand that extends to the characters, leaving their motivations nearly impossible to divine. Under the circumstances, it's impossible to say much about Megumi Nakamura's direction; however, it's pretty clear Kevin Richard Best (Sir Carvin) and Feyisola Soetan (Maeve) have presences that transcend their wildly underwritten characters. (The cast is Black, although the script notes suggest it can be cast in other ways.) Daniel Prosky's scenery features a set of spinning upstage panels designed for swift transitions, but that doesn't prevent lengthy scene changes. Sam Weiser's lighting is so dim, it looks like someone is trying to save on the electric bill. Given the absence of a clear time frame and recognizable location, Roger Teng's costumes are solid enough. Sid Diamond's sound design includes those eerie creaking-house noises and a nice pre-show playlist that includes "I Knew I Could Fly," by the banjo band Our Native Daughters, and "Suffering," by the rock band The War on Drugs. But Sulfur Bottom is too much of a muddle, its points about poverty and pollution obscured by bursts of melodrama and magic-realist devices. Its heart is in the right place, but its storytelling method is askew. It wants to say a lot of things, but it gets them scrambled. --David Barbour 
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