Playwright: Lauren "LL" Lundy. At: MPAACT, Greenhouse Theatre Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets: 773-404-7336; MPAACT.org; $22-$40. Runs through: May 27
Someplace on the Far North Side, Dr. E. J. Lockhart ( Brittany Davis ), a muralist and art professor, is creating a viaduct mural with assistance from her advanced student, Marie Del Pizzo ( Elaina Sanders ), called "Lady Tee" because she likes Teena Marie.
This world-premiere, two-character play concerns these women: one Black and the other white-appearing but partly Latinx; one a teacher/mentor/artist and the other an apprentice; one who has persevered to achieve and the other just starting out. Lockhart is kindly but peremptory, praising Marie's talents but also cutting off discussion about art and her own personal motivations. She offers guidance and advice but reveals little about herself.
They need a crisis to overcome together in this 90-minute play, but don't have one. Their small confrontations are commonplace misunderstandings, failures to communicate and not-unexpected youthful challenges to authority. At the end they prepare to paint, having come to appreciate that they function better as a team than individually. It's a fine cross-generational message, but not dramatic.
Equally important is that the audience never sees a speck of the mural: It isn't painted and little is accomplished physically in the play's span of two or three days. Author Lauren "LL" Lundy doesn't seem to know how such murals are created: clean the walls, prime them with a white base, sketch the outlines of the mural ( perhaps with graph lines lightly drawn ) and then paint. I get that the story of Blood Mural is not about the mural itself nor the nature of artbut the creation of the mural is the only physical action the play suggests, and it doesn't happen. Coupled with the absence of true crisis, it makes Blood Mural static and slow.
Lundy would have a more engaging play if she found a way for Doc Lockhart and Lady Tee to reveal themselves to each other through conversation and action rather than monologue. Davis and Sanders are capable and appealing and could handle a larger dramatic challenge. At the very least, prime that concrete wall at every performance, or have it already primed with the mural sketched in for them to paint. There's gotta' be something, because as it stands Blood Mural fails to meet audience expectations in that regard.
The concrete wall itself, splashed with a few typical graffiti, is the solid-looking realistic work of Danjuma Gaskin.