Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Suzan-Lori Parks’ conflicted new play SALLY & TOM doubles as historical and backstage drama

• By drediman
• April 22, 2024
• No Comments

The opportunity to take in a new Suzan-Lori Parks play is always an occasion to savor. Over the years, the playwright’s fertile imagination has invariably led to thought-provoking nights at the theater. Currently, you’ll find Ms. Parks’ Sally & Tom making its New York premiere at the Public Theater (in a co-production with the Guthrie Theater, where the play originated in 2022). In essence, the play doubles as both a historical and a backstage drama, depicting a scrappy theater company mounting a play about the controversial relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings (over the course of their 30-year relationship, Hemings bore seven children).

Sally & Tom is at once many things, defying easy description the closer you look at it. On the surface, it deceptively registers as a sort of spin on meta-theatrical staples such as Kiss Me, Kate and Noises Off. But the more time you spend with the layered play, you’ll find that Parks’ mind is in perpetual motion, constantly shifting gears throughout as she works through various inquiries. How should the play-within-the-play (entitled “The Pursuit of Happiness”) end? What is the true nature of the the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings? To what extent should art and financial payoff intermingle? Does indeed art imitate life, or vice versa? Although at times frustrating — the play is tad overlong as a result of its spinning wheels — such an approach forces viewers to critically think before landing on a stance, if at all. Indeed, even the play’s conclusion comes across as somewhat unresolved. Underlying the play, however, is the playwright’s love of theater, in particular the process of making theater — the joy, the community, the maddening thrill of it all. At the end of the day, Sally & Tom is as much a love letter to life in the theater as it is other things.

The production has been directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, who stages the play swiftly, emphasizing efficiency over detail and naturalism. The same can be said of veteran designer Riccardo Hernández’s mobile scenery. As such, the play’s two worlds often tend to meld together — for better or worse — but that’s most likely by design. As for the performances of the largely ensemble cast, they’re excellent across the board, starting off broadly but in time digging deeper to locate and reconcile the characters’ conflicting personal truths. In the winding path to the play’s memorable concluding tableau, I was struck by how often I was moved and stimulated by their respective journeys.

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SALLY & TOM
Off-Broadway, Play
The Public Theater
2 hours, 35 minutes (with one intermission)
Through May 26