Elliot Goes

THE PLAY’S THE THING

In the Blood HotHouse Theatre, April 25–May 4

While inspired by The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne), Suzan Lori-Parks’ powerful play In the Bloodshares more parallels with Daniel Defoe’s The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Despite the protagonist’s streetside urban lifestyle, her love and optimistic struggle is unfaltering. However, unlike Letter, The Blood’s Hester La Negrita’s protective love is born solely for her children. Her perpetual hope leads her into constant exploitative liaisons. Similar to Moll Flanders, this leaves her with more children, greater desperation, and spiraling self-destruction.

As in Letter,Hester shares a child with a minister. However, her minister-lover is an antagonist, unscrupulously preaching the responsibilities of men to their families, encouraging single mothers to pursue the pockets of their children’s fathers, while withholding financial assistance from the desperate Hester.

Like Moll Flanders, Hester’s cycle of affairs and one-night stands, beginning with the pursuit of love, is now a means to establish emotional connection with those who influence her life and to stimulate a cash flow. Conversely, Hester’s lovers use her to fulfill more than their base needs. Unwittingly, she falls into their sexual machinations, such as the plans of her best friend and co-purloiner, Amiga, to sell videos of the two together. Not even is her first love, Chili, exempt from this characteristic. After returning in style to propose marriage to the impoverished Hester, he quickly rescinds his offer after his fantasy of a pious Hester is shattered upon his collision with four of her five children.

Writ with the heartbreak of a woman trying to improve herself for the sake of her family but without the strength and means to do so, this moving drama is a social commentary. As a single mother, abandoned by her many lovers, she is the superficial archetype of the urban welfare mom. She demonstrates the battle of many loving mothers to raise their children in good health yet without the resources. In order to meet the family’s basic needs, which include emotional, the social constrictors unwind.

As a result, Hester finds herself conflicted by vying and troubling solutions. Amiga, dancing in the background like an internal devil over Hester’s shoulder, encourages her to give up her children to pursue life’s pleasures. To prevent future children, Hester’s doctor wants to remove her uterus. Using threats, Hester’s duplicitous welfare councilor encourages her to pursue employment, training, or education, without providing clear support for her children or herself. Hester’s minister-lover has offered to treat her as a charity case, so long as she keeps quiet about their son’s parentage and comes to the back door. Yet Hester refuses the one thing that might rescue her, namely, providing the names of her children’s fathers to the government.

Five superb actors perform this daring play. Most remarkable was Monica Parks, who poignantly portrayed Hester’s teetering dark character. The remaining four key actors perform the parts of two characters. Most endearing was Bryan Keith as Hester’s first love, Chili, and her first child, Jabber. As Jabber, Keith eloquently portrayed the budding young adult beginning to realize the faults of his parent yet still determined to protect her from the world. The saddest part is the crushing conclusion when the child’s dawning import of Hester’s faults—and his ensuing

disappointment—leads to the drama’s crushing conclusion. Tann Moore, Hester’s welfare counselor and daughter, Bully, provided overwhelming strength and realism to the bubbling, assured daughter and the absorbed counselor. Chopper Leifheit easily entertained the audience as Hester’s rambunctious yet troublesome son, Trouble, and also provided the drama’s first chill as the doctor. Larissa Forsythe provided bursts of brilliant and humorous energy as Amiga while, at other times, portraying Hester’s adorable little princess, Beauty. Lastly, as both the Reverend and Hester’s fifth child, Baby, Jack J. Gipson smoothly vacillated from the comical caricature of a playful two-year-old to a charismatic preacher who had audience members nodding their heads to his sermons. —Alex Graves

Elliot Goes

by Bosco (with illustration help from Jessica Gluckman)