![]() ![]() Mean words are Parks’ stock in trade in this piercing study of a society that exploits its underclass at every turn. “We ain’t got our leg up just yet,” she says early on, “so we gotta live with mean words.”Īlso Read: 'F-ing A' Theater Review: Christine Lahti Humanizes Suzan-Lori Parks' Dystopia ![]() ![]() The word “slut” is tossed in her direction quite a bit and yet it doesn’t slow her down. ![]() Several years before she won the Pulitzer Prize for “Topdog/Underdog,” Suzan-Lori Parks wrote a pair of plays seeking to riff on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlett Letter.” The more successful is “In the Blood,” which gets a spirited and stirring revival at Off-Broadway’s Signature Theatre complex - where its Brechtian counterpart, “F-ing A,” is playing just across the hall.įor “In the Blood,” Parks reimagines Hester Prynne as an inner-city woman struggling to make ends meet as she raises her five children, each the product of a different, long-gone father.Īs played by the remarkable Saycon Sengbloh (“Scandal,” “Eclipsed”), this Hester is a “welfare queen” striver who recognizes her own role in her predicament (“My life’s my own fault, I know that”) but maintains a compelling optimism despite the many odds stacked against her - from illiteracy to economic deprivation to societal rejection in many forms. ![]()
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