Theater Review by Carol Rocamora . . .
It’s a tried-and-true dramatic setting: the gathering of a family at the “ancestral home.” From Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904) to Brendan Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate (2013), it guarantees enough tension and conflict for an explosive evening of family fireworks. Sometimes, there will even be blood! Indeed, in The Blood Quilt, Katori Hall’s fiery and flamboyant 2015 play, now being revived at Lincoln Center Theater, it’s right there in the title.
The Jernigans in Hall’s melodrama are no ordinary family, believe me. Just wait until you meet them—you’ll never, ever forget them, I promise. The four surviving daughters of Mama Jernigan have gathered in her home on a remote island called Kwemera, off the Georgia coast, to perform an annual family ritual that goes back hundreds of years: the making of a quilt. (One sister has brought her 15-year-old daughter, the only offspring of the group). The year is 2015. This particular stitching reunion has special significance, as Mama died only three weeks prior and has left a pattern for the new quilt that she wants them to follow.
The four sisters have grown up participating in this ritual. Consequently, they are bonded, whether they like it or not (and some of them don’t). Though they share a mother, they each have a different father and, as a result, couldn’t be less alike. Sparks quickly burst into flames when they discover that 1) Mama left a will, controversial in content, which only one of the sisters knew about beforehand; 2) Mama also left a huge debt of $256,527.04 —seven years of unpaid property taxes. What’s the solution? There are only two options: 1) to sell Mama’s historic house, home to generations of the family, going back hundreds of years to pre-slavery times; 2) to sell the collection of quilts made by the women in the family, past and present, that now number over 100.
Yes, the “read-the-will” and “sell-the-estate” plot patterns are familiar. But what makes this story so unique and memorable is its exotic setting and the vivid, vibrant characters who inhabit it—namely, the four surviving daughters. They perform the quilting ritual, for which they’ve gathered over a long weekend, while outside a storm is raging. As they stitch, arguing and debating the urgent issues at hand, a storm is brewing between the sisters, too. We learn a lot about the individual traumas they each experienced growing up, as well as those they are facing now. Clementine (Crystal Dickinson), the eldest, was charged with caring for her dying mother—a lengthy, devastating ordeal for which she is proud, but at the same time resents since she doesn’t get the recognition from her sisters that she feels she deserves. Gio, the second born (Adrienne C. Moore), is a policewoman from Mississippi—loud, brash, contentious, tough-as-nails—who can out-shout them all. Cassan, the feisty third born (named after Cassandra, played by Susan Kelechi Watson), is an army nurse, accompanied by her pot-smoking text-talking fifteen-year-old daughter Zambia (played by Mirirai). Finally, there’s Amber (Lauren E. Banks), the youngest, her mother’s favorite, and the family’s success story (she’s a Harvard graduate and a glamorous entertainment lawyer from LA).
Their cathartic interaction—in which past wounds are torn wide open again, and new ones are inflicted—is played out on Adam Rigg’s elaborate set featuring the Jernigan’s two-story dwelling on the edge of the sea, decked out with dozens of colorful quilts. The quilting ritual they are performing has taken place every May for centuries, and the sisters, while they stitch, call out the names of those who participated before them: aunts, grandmothers, and great-great-grandmothers, as far back as slavery time. “Needle up, needle down,” they chant, as they wield their needles. We learn about the ritual itself, one that they practiced with their mother every year before she died. Each sister is required to hold a corner of the quilt while another assumes the responsibility of completing the center square and then directing the culminating moments—as each stitcher must prick her finger and drip a drop of blood on the quilt.
Soon, the ritual they perform reveals an even deeper, significant historical context, as sweeping ocean waves we hear throughout the play lap up on the shore in front of the cabin. As the family history unfolds, it achieves mythological proportions. We learn that one of the family members chose to drown along with her lover in pre-Civil War time, rather than be separated. As it turns out, that was the choice that Clementine made only three weeks ago with their own mother—to bury her in the sea, too. Thus, waves of mysticism wash over the story just like the projections of the ocean (by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew) that wash over the stage, building to the play’s thrilling climax.
This exotic story has a marvelous, dramatic impact. Playwright Katori Hall has stitched together a patchwork of themes—tradition, ritual, mythology, and family heritage –as rich and colorful as the quilts that decorate the set, the ones that the sisters are being threatened to part with in order to salvage the family home. (By Act II, Amber—at young Zambia’s suggestion—has negotiated with the Smithsonian to purchase over 100 Jernigan quilts for its collection, but Clementine won’t agree.)
One learns a lot about American history in this plentiful play—particularly about the fictitious island of Kwemera which, according to the program notes, means “to last, endure, withstand.” Evidently, it’s based on Sapelo, an island off the Georgia coast that has been isolated for centuries (no bridge connects it to the mainland), where descendants of the Gullah (a Black ethnic group) still live, and the Creole dialect Geechee is still spoken (by Clementine, for example).
All this is a rich theatrical brew of family, tradition, and history—directed swiftly and skillfully by Lileana Blain-Cruz, and performed by a wonderful cast that brings these colorful roles to vibrant, passionate life. Crystal Dickinson’s delivery of Katori Hall’s musical dialect is superb; Adrienne C. Moore gives a larger-than-life performance that frequently stops the show and is the source of the play’s rich humor; Lauren Banks plays Amber, the glamorous, conflicted lawyer, with special sensitivity. The mother-daughter dynamic between Cassan (Susan Kelechi Watson) and Zambia (Mirirai) is extremely entertaining, with the latter providing an important perspective of a member of the younger generation in desperate search for a role model among her aunts. It’s well worth seeing for the compelling story, the vibrant characters, the deep history, and the sensational conclusion (featuring water, of course, the play’s chief symbol, that flows throughout).
Like Sutter’s ghost in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, the spirits of the stitching Jernigan women of past generations haunt The Blood Quilt, reminding us of the vital importance of ritual and tradition in history and identity. And, similar to the four singing sisters in Jez Butterworth’s The Hills of California (currently playing on Broadway), the four stitching sisters of The Blood Quilt will remain in our theater-going memory for their uniqueness, their passion, their flaws, and, above all, their indestructible bond with the past and with each other.
The Blood Quilt. Through December 29 at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater (150 West 65th Street, between Columbus Avenue and Tenth Avenue). www.lct.org
Photos: Julieta Cervantes
