The House That Will Not Stand, 26.11.14

Queen Bee of New Orleans:
Martina Laird's Beartrice massaged
by her slave Makeda (Tanya Moodie)

Marcus Gardley’s “The House That Will Not Stand”, a compulsively watchable new African-American play currently playing at Indhu Rubasingham’s Tricycle in its European première, was a greedy child’s pick-a-mix in the sweet-store of literary tropes.

You want three young sisters pining for male suitors à la Chekhov and Cinders desperate to reach the ball?  Check.  You want an indomitable materfamilias ruling her family with a rod of iron à la Bernarda Alba?  Check.  You want a supposedly unhinged female relative locked up in the attic à la Miss Havisham?  Check.  You want a subordinate out-smarting their stubborn employer à la Goldoni?  Check.  A narrative of female emancipation like Celie’s in ‘The Color Purple”?  Check.  A steamy, sultry New Orleans à la “Streetcar”?  Check.  Drums providing distant echoes of Mother Africa like O’Neill’s “Emperor Jones”?  Check.  A ghost scene and domestic hocus-pocus fresh out of Edgar Allan Poe?  Check.  A bitch-fest between two pugnacious matrons Capote would have killed to write?  Check.

Martina Laird's Beartrice takes her sister
Marie (Claire Perkins) in hand

Add-in some cutesy Gallicisms (it was the French Quarter after all), a smattering of mournful Latin chanting (Lorca again), some sparkling patois (novel Creole meanings for “tea” and “pie”), and an inexhaustible fund of hot-zinger one-liners.  Stir.  Serve hot, courtesy of a female cast on tip-top-form.  Await applause, standing ovations (spontaneous on the night Motley was there) and, with luck, a generous dollop of gongs to follow.

 

The Three Sisters of Faubourg Treme:
devout Maude Lynn (Danusia Samal),
flighty Agnes (Ayesha Antoine) &
dreamy Odette (Ronke Adelkoluejo)

I make light of Gardley’s achievements. His new play broke fresh ground, uncovering a forgotten corner of U.S. history.  The setting was New Orleans 1836, after the Louisiana Purchase (1803), but before the full enforcement of binary U.S. race laws.  French and Spanish custom and colonial law had recognised a mestizo caste and enabled a few black women to own property (including their own slaves) by virtue of being white men’s concubines (“placées”).  But under U.S. governance the racial thumbscrews were tightening.  So when wealthy placée Beartrice’s common-law white husband dies mysteriously, there’s no time to be lost to ensure she keeps a roof over her head and provides for her variously-hued daughters, wayward sister and slave.

Playwright Marcus Gardley (b1978)

If gathering racial storm-clouds make Gardley’s play sound rather heavy (and the ending, while agonisingly well-done by Martina Laird, was a tad histrionic), what really marked Gardley’s play out was its verbal inventiveness, comic verve and the deftly-judged interplay between the female characters. 

 

Fresh from her success in "Intimate Apparel" in the summer, Tanya Moodie’s level-headed and regal slave Makeda demonstrated movingly that legal niceties are nothing set against emotional strength. But the most unforgettable scenes for this writer were the verbal duels between Martina Laird’s steely Beartrice and her sworn enemy, the well-upholstered La Veuve, played with a glint by Michele Austin:

La Veuve (Michelle Austin, to L) faces off against
Beartrice (Martina Laird, to R), flanked by
Beartrice's three daughters

“Sweet Jesus, when I heard you was poorer than Joe’s turkey, I shed a whole tear, I did.  That's why I’m really here in fact.  I ran over to share it with you.  See.  It’s still in my eye.  I’m saving it for you so you can wash the floors with it before I move in.“  (La Veuve)

“The only movin' you doin' is movin' them two antsy legs and that wide mouth off my porch.  I’m keeping my house.  ....  It’s sad that you hate me so much .... It makes me want to shed a whole tear for you.  And I would if I thought it would wash away your hatefulness.  But hate is your true love.  And one day it will eat you:  flesh, bone and sinew, till all that is left is your fluttering tongue:  that overworked red cut of meat that for all its flapping ain’t never did nobody no earthly good” (Beartrice)

 

Anyone who wants to catch this awesome show had better hurry:  it finishes Saturday November 29th.