Review Roundup: SHADOW/LAND Opens At The Public Theater

The world premiere staging of shadow/land by Erika Dickerson-Despenza opens tonight at The Public Theater. Read the reviews!

Directed by Candis C. Jones, 2021 Susan Blackburn Prize winner Erika Dickerson-Despenza's shadow/land returns this April with a stunning live production. As Hurricane Katrina begins her ruin, tensions between duty and desire surface, a levee is brought to its knees, and Ruth must wrestle with all that she's ready to let go. shadow/land is a lyrical meditation on legacy, erotic fugitivity, and self-determination. Directed by Lilly Award winner Candis C. Jones, shadow/land is the first installment of a 10-play cycle traversing the Katrina diaspora in an examination of the ongoing effects of disaster, evacuation, displacement, and urban renewal rippling in and beyond New Orleans.

The complete cast of shadow/land includes Joniece Abbott-Pratt (Ruth), Lynnette R. Freeman (Ruth Understudy), Perri Gaffney (Magalee Understudy), Lizan Mitchell (Magalee), Christine Shepard (Grand Marshal), and Joy-Marie Thompson (Grand Marshal Understudy).

The production features scenic design by Jason Ardizzone-West; costume design by Azalea Fairley; lighting design by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew; sound design by Palmer Hefferan; original music composed by Delfeayo Marsalis; hair, wig, and makeup design by Earon Chew Nealey; movement direction by Jill M. Vallery; and intimacy coordination by Ann James. Janelle Caso serves as production stage manager and Daniel Vaughn serves as stage manager.

Naveen Kumar, The New York Times: Abbott-Pratt and Mitchell are challenged with playing characters who are held captive not only by society, but by the script, which is somewhat weighed down by the exposition inherent to oral histories. But they embody the push and pull of a mother-daughter bond with captivating ease and grace. At once imperious and fragile, Mitchell's Magalee may not remember what she ate for breakfast, but she will never let Ruth forget the importance of honoring their predecessors, the sacrifices they made and the gifts they left behind. Who else will share their stories when the evidence gets washed away?

Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal: The director, Candis C. Jones, displays an assured dexterity in blending the play's dual textures, its urgent realism-we watch in anxiety as Ruth and Magalee must scramble atop the bar to escape the waist-high water-and its ascents into the surreal. "shadow/land" is, according to press materials, just the first in Ms. Dickerson-Despenza's planned cycle of 10 plays exploring the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the city and its inhabitants. It's a decidedly promising beginning.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: "shadow/land," the first of playwright Erika Dickerson-Despenza's planned ten-play cycle about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, was first produced two years ago (a year into the COVID-19 shutdown) pandemic, as an audio drama. The podcast told much of its story through the sounds of violent weather, breaking glass, panicked 911 calls; water flooding, dogs growling, helicopters passing by overhead. Now the same director, Candis C. Jones, has created a new production, on stage at the Public Theater, so radically different - and yet so essentially the same - that the productions feel like a useful lesson in the theatrical arts. The soundscape is still important, but it's primarily the soundscape of language, a poetic gumbo thick with what the playwright herself calls "the weight and rhythm" of local allusions and regional Black vernacular - always pleasing to the ear even when not every word is clear.