Theatre in Review: Sugar in Our Wounds (Manhattan Theatre Club/City Center Stage II)

	Stephanie Berry, Sheldon Best. Photo: Joan Marcus

Donja R. Love, a self-described Afro-Queer playwright, may be something of a new face on the New York theatre scene, but he has big ambitions. His Love Trilogy is intended to examine queer black life at different historical moments, including the civil rights years and the Black Lives Matter era. In Sugar in Our Wounds, the first in the trio, Love has taken the gutsy decision to dramatize a gay affair between slaves on a Southern plantation circa 1862. Given the relative paucity of information on such matters in the historical record, a vivid imaginative leap was indicated -- and, in its early passages, the play is almost overrun with folkloric/magical-realist touches, including colorful dialogue, a stash of healing dust, spontaneous outbursts of singing and dancing, and a talking tree from which all the protagonists' male ancestors have been hung. The sheer agglomeration of such devices leaves one with the early -- and incorrect -- impression that Love has stitched together his work from pieces of other plays and books about slave culture. Once he has introduced his cast of characters, it becomes clear that he is trying for something altogether different from any previous dramatic treatment of the period.

Under the spreading branches that dominate Arnulfo Maldonado's enveloping, atmospheric set, Sugar in Our Wounds assembles an ad hoc family of slaves, the members of whom scrape out a daily existence, only dimly aware of the vast changes being wrought by the Civil War. (A scrap of newspaper found by one of the characters alludes to the possibility of the Emancipation Proclamation, still several months in the future.) James, the young man mentioned above, lives with Aunt Mama -- who is not his relative but functions as a kind of matriarch, most notably in her steady stream of oracular pronouncements -- and Mattie, who, despite her facial scars, is sufficiently young and pretty to have caught the unwelcome attentions of the plantation's unseen master. (Later revelations will cast this abusive relationship in an even more horrifying light.) There are other tensions: Even though James is rather obviously what was then known as "sweet," he is subjected to reading lessons by Isabel, the master's neurotic, attention-seeking daughter, each of which is rife with cruelty, condescension, and Isabel's none-too-discreet attempts at seduction.

The little household's perilous existence is further complicated by the arrival of Henry, a new purchase, who is distraught at being separated from his family and has a habit of talking back to his owners. (He plans to escape and track down his loved ones, a quixotic goal at best, under the circumstances.) Aunt Mama takes him in, and, before long, he and James are drawn to each other, experiencing an intimacy that is entirely new to them. In a disarmingly frank conversation, Aunt Mama tells James that such feelings are thoroughly normal, admitting to several same-sex liaisons over the years. But the author is too realistic to allow their idyll to last. Profound pressures are brought to bear on the young men, including Mattie's desire for Henry and Isabel's lust for both him and James, not to mention's Henry's explosive temper. It isn't long before the action hurtles toward an appalling outcome that, the author makes clear, must simply be borne by those who survive it.

Love's skillful construction draws us into the danger-fraught narrative, even as he places James and Henry inside a fantastical landscape dominated by the tree of James' ancestors, which speaks to him alone and which, the men imagine, is tall enough to provide them access to heaven. The author also makes us care, deeply, about James and Henry, even as circumstances conspire to bring them down. (That carefully dropped piece of information about Lincoln freeing the slaves is enough to inspire the tiny hope that they might escape the beartrap of history.) Saheem Ali's direction accentuates the growing sense of a situation about to blow wide open, conveying, with discomforting clarity, the knowledge, shared by all but Isabel, that the only thing standing between them and ruination is the whim of any white person.

All five cast members contribute to the web of relationships that ultimately must be sundered: Sheldon Best's James is marked by an appealing innocence yet is believably on the cusp of understanding something profound about his nature; Chinaza Uche finds both the tenderness and cauterizing rage in Henry's soul. Stephanie Berry presides grandly over the action as Aunt Mama, impressing the most when delivering the news of the denouement with devastating restraint. Tiffany Rachelle Stewart's Mattie is a plaintive, plainspoken soul, heartbreaking in her simple acceptance of the ghastly treatment that is her lot. Fern Cozine's Isabel is a bundle of nerves and frustrations -- missing her soldier husband and ashamed of her inability to conceive a child -- making her almost pitiable but for her blindly destructive ways.

Maldonado's set is lit stunningly by Jason Lyons, who combines naturalistic looks -- sunlight washes that created dappled patterns on the deck and gorgeously colored sunsets -- with the theatrical use of saturated color in sequences built around the story's more mystical aspects. Dede Ayite's costumes, contrasting the ragged outfits worn by the slaves with Isabel's immaculate frocks, make their own powerful statement. Palmer Hefferan's sound design provides reinforcement for Michael Thurber's original music, adding in such effects as birdsong, flowing water, and the voice of the tree.

Even if Sugar in Our Wounds -- the title of which alludes to an especially savage punishment meted out to runaways -- must end in tragedy, there's something exhilarating about Love's reclamation of a little-understood aspect of America's past. Given the black community's often uneasy recognition of the gays and lesbians who populate its history, Love's focus on everyday lives feels like an especially daring work of revisionist history. Bring on the rest of his trilogy, please. -- David Barbour