‘In the Blood’ at con-con earns a scarlet A | Theater review

Suzan-Lori Parks’ 1999 play “In the Blood” ends the way Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” — a novel about 17th-century life in Puritan Massachusetts and the play’s source of inspiration — begins. Hester, standing silent on a scaffold while subjected to public humiliation, bravely shows contempt for a hard and pitiless world that offers no mercy to those who transgress its rigid codes of conduct.

And, like the Hester of old, this one draws the same conclusion about her plight: “I don’t think the world likes women much.”

In Parks’ modern-day rendition — a Pulitzer Prize finalist getting a solid staging at convergence-continuum — Hester is a homeless black woman in a nameless metropolis living under a bridge with her five children, each from a different father. The A that was scarlet and stood for adulterer in Hawthorne’s work represents the only letter this illiterate, powerless and exploited woman can read and write.

Hester’s exploiters, cleverly represented by the same actors who play her children, take their turns stepping out of the play’s dialogue-driven storytelling to offer a direct-address confessional in which they bare their souls, expose their shortcomings and argue their excuses.

They are the hypocritical Rev. D (a dynamic Anthony X, who also plays the 2-year-old, named Baby), who fathered Hester’s youngest child; the capitalist streetwalker Amiga Gringa (a brazen Grace Mitri, who also plays Hester’s daughter Beauty), who befriends Hester so to cheat her financially and take advantage of her sexually; the repressive and disdainful Welfare Lady (Shannon Sharkey, who also plays oldest daughter Bully with remarkable tenacity); Hester’s two-faced doctor (a charming Patrick Gladish, who also portrays middle son Trouble); and Chilli, Hester’s first love and father of her oldest sonm Jabber (both played with virtuosity by Daryl Kelly), who literally waltzes back into Hester’s life after a 13-year absence, only to predictably walk out again.

As the tragic and culturally crippled Hester, Jeannine Gaskin is an absolute pleasure to watch. Her sweet, simple and self-sacrificing demeanor effectively undermines the suggestion made in the play’s title that there must be something in the blood that makes a poor, powerless and sexually permissive women like her poor, powerless, sexually permissive and, eventually, a danger to herself and others. As does Hawthorne, the playwright points the finger at society.

Hester’s hopeless and woefully desolate situation takes physical form in Scott Zolkowksi’s scenic design. He has created a lifeless concrete jungle complete with chain-link fence, graffiti-tagged walls and moss-stained cement steps, dramatically lit by Cory Molner. This is one of the few plays at con-con where the street traffic that can be heard from outside the theater actually adds to Beau Reinker’s sound design.

Molner also serves as the show’s director, where his only shortcoming is missing much of the play’s sardonic humor. It is, admittedly, woven deep within the dark threads of each confessional and difficult to access, but actors tend to speed through those moments rather than chew on them awhile.

Parks’ play rages acerbically, articulately and without subtlety against a system that grinds women like Hester down, and it feels as vital and urgent today as when Hawthorne’s novel was released.

This con-con production captures all this and makes for an intriguing and thought-provoking evening of theater.

‘In the Blood’

Continues through June 9 in convergence-continuum’s Liminis Theatre, 2438 Scranton Road, Cleveland. For tickets, $10 to $20, call 216-687-0074 or visit convergence-continuum.org.

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