Review Roundup: PLANTATION! at Lookingglass Theatre

The reviews are in for the world-premiere of PLANTATION! at Lookingglass Theatre, written by Kevin Douglas and directed by David Schwimmer. PLANTATION! opened on February 21st, and will run through April 22nd.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune: By making the Texan women - especially Lamson's very out-there Kimberly, but all of them, really - so wackily removed from believability, they become paper tigers, blunting what I think Douglas and Schwimmer really want to say. "Plantation" could work as crazy satire, and it has some successful moments in that mode, but satire is, by nature, amoral. And there is actually a very moral intent behind this work: a very good moral argument, in fact, that inherited wealth that comes from slavery must now be rethought. And that rethinking must, by necessity, be personal. But instead of making us realize how much we all share with these characters, and allowing us to feel the weight of all their problems, we watch them from a place removed. The African-American women are drawn with more complexity, but, in any kind of reality, they also would ask a lot of questions that never get mentioned here. While I'm on that topic, a central plot point involving a crisis in the family business that's predicated on a FexEd delivery is absurd, in a house full of Wi-Fi. Those things matter: The more out there you want a farce to be, the more rooted you have to be in truth.

Steven Oxman, Chicago Sun-Times: And indeed, thanks to a surplus of sharp one-liners and an expert, all-women ensemble directed fluidly by David Schwimmer of "Friends" fame, the proceedings produce some ideal moments of ultra-edgy hilarity... Indeed, as satire, "Plantation!" works. It pokes an awful lot of fun at social stereotypes (mostly by portraying rather than undercutting them), and provides a conflict of cultures that captures plenty of misunderstandings that dig fairly and funnily at our society's racial divide. But there are flaws. It does over-rely on Kimberly's stupidity to drive the action. Racism - of the conscious or latent variety - and stupidity correlate, no doubt, but stupidity is the easier way out and makes for a lot of happenings that we can never for a second believe will play out as she imagines.

Rachel Weinberg, BroadwayWorld: From the exclamation point in the title to the characters who play off numerous societal tropes, Douglas's play reads larger than life. PLANTATION! operates on a dual ground in which I found myself constantly laughing and enjoying myself, but also constantly being faced with uncomfortable truths. And while the script itself in places seems overly broad, Schwimmer's direction makes every moment as tight as it can be and the ensemble succeeds in mightily in finding the truth in their satirical characters... PLANTATION! is a timely, truthful, and outright hilarious comedy, and I particularly appreciated seeing a show that was focused on all women. While I think there are a few beats towards the end in which Douglas could have let the satire abate to arrive at some more serious moments, the play overall has a wonderful sense of timing and narrative arc. The show also succeeds in being both immensely entertaining while also opening up some important and overarching questions about race in this country and about how we can truly overcome a racist past.

Lawrence Bommer, Stage and Cinema: It's so well-intentioned that the results are doubly deplorable. Lookingglass Theatre Company's Plantation!, a world premiere by ensemble member Kevin Douglas staged by their own David Schwimmer, might have mattered. That's the saddest thing about this clumsy comedy. Its goal is golden - to explore the painful payback of retroactive justice. Its worthy subject is reparations, damages delivered to compensate the victims' offspring for the cumulative curse of chattel bondage.

Kevin Greene, New City Stage: By making its subtext explicit, "Plantation!" joins a recent, growing trend of works ("Breach" at Victory Gardens, "The Burn" at Steppenwolf for Young Adults) that promote certainty over ambiguity, and in doing so, coddle their audiences by setting the bar for what constitutes morally acceptable behavior low enough to skip over. There is nothing confrontational or even potentially divisive about the play, which limits its potential to say much of anything meaningful about racism, a subject not known for its neatness. Douglas has designed a play so clean in its presentation of character that we are never really asked to consider what is right or wrong. I found myself wondering what Thomas Bradshaw (a playwright who is far from risk-averse) or Aziza Barnes might do with similar material. My guess is that the result would be messier, more entertaining and, one would hope, actually intersectional. Case in point: a young Latina is treated thoughtlessly by the white and black women alike, her voice drowned out by cringeworthy ignorance or PSA-ready sidebars. It seems Douglas was too busy setting his sides in symmetrical opposition to be concerned about what, or who, might fall in between.

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