REVIEW: The Great Privation (Woolly Mammoth)
Woolly is between eras right now. Maria Manuela Goyanes has departed for greener orchards, taking over the artistic director role at LCT3 in Manhattan after leading DC’s most offbeat LORT house through the pandemic. For her departing season, she’s set up another hodgepodge season of co-productions and one-person fringe products. Though I would like to see the next artistic director return to their reputation for producing bold, unflinching, and often downright weird new works, I’m nonetheless excited for whatever they put out. The first proper “play” of this season is The Great Privation (How to Flip Ten Cents into a Dollar), a co-production with Boston’s CompanyOne. Though its premise formidable, it distracts itself with unsure direction and loose writing.
Book
The plot occurs over two parallel-ish timelines in Philadelphia. In 1832, a mother and daughter stand watch overnight at the late patriarch’s grave site to protect against “resurrectionists” — in this case, medical students who sought to exhume bodies without consent for scientific purposes. This timeline follows their relationship in a free city while slavery marches on to the south, and involves their interaction with two types of snatchers: one intellectual and white, and one optimistic and black (for his employer). Intermittently, the show shifts nearly 200 years ahead to modern-day, at a perky summer camp, which was built over the same spot. The mother and daughters are maintained in their focus, but the third-party characters are more involved in the storytelling in this timeline. The 1832 pair have to maintain presence for three days such that the body decomposes enough to be unsuitable for research. This countdown device is interesting and effective, but it runs out too early in the show’s length, leaving us with the decidedly less engaging summer camp half for about 60% of the show. It’s in this section that things, in classic Woolly fashion, “get weird”. But too much does it feel like a grasp at our attention instead of a natural feat of earning it, which is a turn-off. The ending peters into a graded fourth-wall break that felt strange, if not desperate. The cleverness of the parallel timelines is ended prematurely, and the remainder of the show suffers. 4/10
Acting
The quartet of an ensemble often feels like too much; not in a performance sense, but in size. The central mother-daughter dynamic, Yetunde Felix-Ukwu and Victoria Omoregie respectfully, are sharply acted with a magnetic, familiar chemistry to both themselves and the audience. The two men of the play, Marc Pierre and Zack Powell, are also objectively good; but feel misused or even narratively obstructive. 6/10
Production
The staging itself isn’t much to write home about: a dirty platform, some background patches of grass. But the lighting and projection work (Amith Chandrashaker) are what zap life into this otherwise dull environ, and the moments those are active are some of the play’s best. 4/10
Viz
Something hints at the split-timeline story device in the cover art of Woolly’s program, but the title leaves intrigue that I don’t think is fulfilled. The pre-show has a bit more life to it via the ominous countdown clock and massive sand platform, but still isn’t very memorable or foreboding. 2/10
Verdict
The Great Privation has great ideas that creatively delve into the past and modern plights of Blackness in a “liberal” city, but too often gets ahead of itself in its execution. 16/40
