Last night, I saw Naomi Wallace's play The Liquid Plain at the Signature Theatre Company. The play is a hot mess, throwing together issues of slavery, racism, kidnapping, amnesia, rape, and murder, all served with a side of cross-dressing and gender non-conformity. Needless to say, there is never a dull moment.
That doesn't mean the play entirely works. The lead-up to the Act I finale is particularly muddy. Wait, was he stabbed or not? Who knows about the rape? Was she just killed? What are we going to be watching for in the second act? The audience has to work so hard keeping up with some clumsy storytelling that it doesn't have time to contemplate the important issues Wallace raises (but then never adequately manages to address).
The good news is that as soon as you think you know what the play is up to, Wallace throws in another melodramatic turn of events. This keeps the show interesting, even after the action has long ceased to be believable. The biggest jump comes between the two acts, when the time period shifts from 1791 to 1837, and the central character shifts to someone who wasn't even born during the first act.
Wallace also beautifully works in some poetry by William Blake, a noted critic of slavery. The play's title does not come from a Blake poem, though, but from Phillis Wheatley's "A Farewell to America":
ADIEU, New-England’s smiling meads,
Adieu, the flow’ry plain:
I leave thine op’ning charms, O spring,
And tempt the roaring main.
In vain for me the flow’rets rise,
And boast their gaudy pride,
While here beneath the northern skies
I mourn for health deny’d.
Celestial maid of rosy hue,
O let me feel thy reign!
I languish till thy face I view,
Thy vanish’d joys regain.
Susannah mourns, nor can I bear
To see the crystal show’r,
Or mark the tender falling tear
At sad departure’s hour;
Not unregarding can I see
Her soul with grief opprest:
But let no sighs, no groans for me,
Steal from her pensive breast.
In vain the feather’d warblers sing,
In vain the garden blooms,
And on the bosom of the spring
Breathes out her sweet perfumes,
While for Britannia’s distant shore
We sweep the liquid plain,
And with astonish’d eyes explore
The wide-extended main.
Lo! Health appears! celestial dame!
Complacent and serene,
With Hebe’s mantle o’er her Frame,
With soul-delighting mein.
To mark the vale where London lies
With misty vapours crown’d,
Which cloud Aurora’s thousand dyes,
And veil her charms around,
Why, Phœbus, moves thy car so slow?
So slow thy rising ray?
Give us the famous town to view,
Thou glorious king of day!
For thee, Britannia, I resign
New-England’s smiling fields;
To view again her charms divine,
What joy the prospect yields!
But thou! Temptation hence away,
With all thy fatal train
Nor once seduce my soul away,
By thine enchanting strain.
Thrice happy they, whose heav’nly shield
Secures their souls from harms,
And fell Temptation on the field
Of all its pow’r disarms!
The Liquid Plain is playing until March 29th. For more information, check out the Signature's Website:
Signature Theatre Company
