Review Roundup: CULLUD WATTAH Opens at The Public Theater

Written by Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner Erika Dickerson-Despenza and directed by Lilly Award winner Candis C. Jones, Cullud Wattah follows three generations of Black women living through the Flint Water Crisis. The world premiere began preview performances in The Public's Martinson Hall on Tuesday, November 2 and officially opened on Wednesday, November 17.

The complete cast of Cullud Wattah features Crystal Dickinson (Marion), Jennean Farmer (Marion/Ainee Understudy), Lizan Mitchell (Big Ma), Ta'Neesha Murphy (Plum/Reesee Understudy), Andrea Patterson (Ainee), Alicia Pilgrim (Plum), Chavez Ravine (Big Ma Understudy), and Lauren F. Walker (Reesee).

2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner Erika Dickerson-Despenza's new Afro-surrealist play premieres at The Public about three generations of Black women living through the current water crisis in Flint, Michigan. It's been 936 days since Flint has had clean water. Marion, a third-generation General Motors employee, is consumed by layoffs at the engine plant. When her sister, Ainee, seeks justice and restitution for lead poisoning, her plan reveals the toxic entanglements between the city and its most powerful industry, forcing their family to confront the past-present-future cost of survival. As lead seeps into their home and their bodies, corrosive memories and secrets rise among them. Will this family ever be able to filter out the truth? Directed by Lilly Award winner Candis C. Jones, Cullud Wattah blends form and bends time, diving deep into the poisonous choices of the outside world, the contamination within, and how we make the best choices for our families' futures when there are no real, present options. Cullud Wattah comes to us from the same playwright and director duo behind the thrilling digital production of shadow/land.

See what the critics are saying...

Naveen Kumar, The New York Times: Inseparable as real-world calamity has become from the realm of art, Dickerson-Despenza's "Cullud Wattah" is especially suited to a moment of environmental unrest. After the play comes to an abrupt end, the cast stands in silence before leaving the stage. They don't return for a bow, as if this had not been a performance but a call to account.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: "Cullud Wattah" gives a whole new meaning to the words "kitchen sink drama." Adding to what that genre typically offers, Dickerson-Despenza adds a couple of didactic but gripping speeches and bookends it all with a lyrical surrealism. Playing the youngest member of this family, Alicia Pilgrim embodies that walking nightmare without ever revealing the exact age of this girl. Lauren F. Walker ably plays her sister, and the physical contrast between her character and Pilgrim's is just one of many silent but haunting touches that director Candis C. Jones brings to the story.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: Debate over whether works of art, no matter how fine, can affect the course of actual life has never been resolved. It may be that Dickerson-Despenza's assiduously composed Cullud Wattah won't have the surely desired effect sought not only by her but by The Public Theater (which has added a companion installation elsewhere in the building). A widespread outcome is up to uncontrollable circumstances. For the moment, Dickerson-Despenza deserves gratitude for framing such a national issue as an intimately human, and therefore extremely relatable, protest.

Raven Snook, Time Out New York: The production isn't perfect: The first act feels long, there are awkward scene transitions and Pilgrim is not quite convincing as a nine-year-old child, though she gives a glimpse of the grown woman Plum could be. But cullud wattah offers a powerful depiction of the toll that climate change, systemic racism and greed take on ordinary people. Its discomfiting truths leave you thirsty for justice.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: Director Candis C. Jones (who also directed Shadow/Land) has assembled a committed cast, and ably translated the playwright's verbal poetry into a visual style that - with the colored water lining the stage, and sparkling from the rafters - helps drive home both the ugliness of the story, and the beauty of its telling.

Juan A. Ramirez, Theatrely: Candis C. Jones directs this heady work in a manner elegant in its magical realism, and grounded in her attention to the talented cast, which turn in equally affecting performances. Reflective of the playwright's genuine care for her characters, she writes each one to be as indispensable to the drama as they are to each other. With these fully realized women, to go into their individual ails, dreams, and woes is to unravel the tight thread work that the play so carefully and beautifully weaves and undoes throughout.