Suzan-Lori Parks’ In The Blood is so unremittingly bleak it takes a little effort to get past one’s dismay and notice the brilliance of Erica Sutherland in the main role. Sutherlin plays Hester, a homeless mother of five, who lives under a bridge, can only spell the letter “A,” and gets exploited sexually by just about every adult she knows, male and female. As played by the astonishing Sutherlin in the current Stageworks production, Hester is tenacious, tender, authoritarian, easily duped, maternal, indecisive, and almost childishly hopeful.
Stageworks, 1120 E. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, through Feb. 21. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. $30. 813-374-2416. stageworkstheatre.org.
To watch her adult acquaintances abuse her, though, is painful — one waits fruitlessly for the person who will rescue her from her hell. And to watch her kids grow up broken in an unforgiving city is almost as distressing — one looks futilely for the relief that a reasonable, compassionate grownup might afford them. Finally, all the bad news in Blood is too hard to take: After all, one muses, there are soup kitchens for people who can’t afford a meal, shelters for the homeless, honorable city employees and volunteers who know better than to take advantage of a woman who’s way down on her luck. Not that predators don’t exist; but as anyone who’s ever volunteered to help the poor knows, predators are not the whole story. With a smidgen of light, In The Blood might have been a potent call to remember a city’s outcasts. But because Parks won’t let her heroine find a spark of relief anywhere, we’re left with a case study of one multiply-doomed woman. Hers is a hard story to watch.
Everyone misuses Hester. There’s Reverend D., played by the persuasive Willie Hannah. Reverend D. is one of Hester’s former lovers and the father of her youngest child. When Hester comes to him for a little child support, he puts her off, promises a big collection at his church, then inevitably tells her that no one gave a cent. Reverend D., we quickly come to realize, has no intention of helping his ex-lover or providing for their child; it never strikes him that being a man of God just might mean that he has greater, not less, responsibility than others. At his moment of greatest coarseness, the Reverend responds to Hester’s pleas for help by asking her to perform oral sex on him. Typically, sadly, Hester complies; and afterwards is shunted away, an embarrassment. Apparently, no one’s too lofty to take advantage of a hurting soul.
Or consider Welfare Lady, played chillingly by the talented Amber Forbes. Yes, she coldly goes through the motions of trying to help Hester, but what’s really on her mind is the threesome she had with Hester and her husband, a memory that only bothers her because Hester’s so “low class.” Or there’s The Doctor, played with suitable repulsiveness by Johnny Garde. Yes, he too was once Hester’s lover, but when he’s not making her submit to an intrusive, callous physical examination, he’s recommending that she solve the problem of homelessness with a hysterectomy. There’s Amiga Gringa, portrayed by Suzy Devore with just the right narcissism, a prostitute who sees Hester mainly as a subject with whom to star in some X-rated peep shows. And there’s Chili, played with primitive force by Domingo Ocasio, Jr., who may or may not be the romantic solution to Hester’s isolation — only he doesn’t yet know that Hester has five bastard children, not one. Parks shows us all these figures in scenes with her desperate protagonist, then allows each to address the audience directly. What was obvious in the duets is no less patent in the monologues: these creeps are aware of no-one’s needs but their own. And they’re entirely unacquainted with the milk of human kindness.
Of course, there’s always Hester’s five children — played by the aforementioned five adult actors — to provide some distraction, but what seems in the play’s first minutes to be a more or less happy family eventually turns out to be a matrix of difficulty and even rage. At least the acting here is stellar, even if the parts acted are basically heartbreaking. Director Fanni Green does a crackerjack job of bringing us Hester’s cruel world, and set designer Frank Chavez puts the action on a heroically messy set, including a tent and an upturned barrel over which lurks a huge trestle. Chavez also designed Amiga Gringa’s hot pants, Hester’s ill-fitting coat, and the Reverend D.’s attractive suit.
Is there any hope for Hester? Oedipus has his daughters, Hamlet his friend Horatio, but Parks’ heroine’s only advocate is Parks herself, who chose to write about her. The result is a tough, astringent drama, in some ways admirable, in others unbearable. I guess I’m glad that I saw it. But at times it was grim.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2016.