Playwright: Creola Thomas
At: ETA Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. South Chicago Ave.
Phone: (773) 752-3955; $25
Runs through: Feb. 22
The 1940 census figures for the town of Belzoni, Miss., show its population at that time to have been just over 3,000 citizens, and while negroes were fully represented by those figures, 'Jim Crow' laws severely restricted their legal and social mobility. Those in power were scarcely better off, oppressed by economic devastation and archaic values. In this Dickensian environment, events and coincidences unthinkable to our modern sensibilities become suddenly plausible.
By 1969, the setting of Creola Thomas' play, only four of the slatternly Mama Carter's five daughters are still living. The surviving siblings include pious Lillian, romantic Ruby, smart Sarah and recently divorced Helen. Together with Lillian's genially unemployed husband, they share a shabby house and the scorn of their neighbors. But Sarah believes herself to be the spawn of a rich white man, now on his deathbed, and is accumulating evidence—some actual and some fabricated—toward proving it, chief among which is the diary of the late Mama Carter. But when that chronicle is finally brought to light, questions of inheritance are not the only matters plunged into upheavel by the secrets revealed therein.
Though the idiom of America's southern states is noteworthy for its extravagant reiteration, Thomas' text is in need of some editing before fulfilling its destiny as an African-American Crimes Of The Heart. Under Mignon McPherson Nance's direction, however, the company assembled for this ETA production argue the reasons for each character's individual choices, imposing intelligence and compassion on archetypes well-documented in historical fact, but nowadays easily reduced to comic-book flatness. And as with Beth Henley, what is important is that we LIKE these women and WANT their stories to end happily—or, at least, to offer the promise of better days to come.
The Sisters From Belzoni might be dismissed as a 'chick play'—Thomas' portrayal of the Carter swains accurately reflect a culture where the men often have little to say in family matters. But if its baroque plot twists sometimes awaken nostalgic memories of prime-time television sudsers, they were also sufficient to render the customarily vocal opening-night audience uncommonly hushed in their eagerness to hear WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. And isn't that a good story's first duty?