By Martha Heimberg
Bondage at Undermain portrays the trauma of slavery erupting from the tight gene pool of an island plantation.
It’s a wise child who knows his own father,” is an adage as old as Homer and reiterated by Shakespeare. Interpreted over and again, the line demonstrates the ambiguity and intrigue of language – and our struggle to convey the complex truths of human experience with words. Who knows, if not the mother, the biological father of her child? Maybe it refers to a revelation about the true nature of one’s biological parent. Philosophers use the line to praise the wisdom of those who know where they got their ideas from.
In Star Finch’s Bondage, in its regional premiere at Undermain Theatre, two teenage girls in the hormonal surges of puberty are asking these questions and also role-playing over who is the slave and who is the master. Can they channel their burgeoning sexual allure to gain power? Freedom? Orgasm? That’s a lot to enact in a 100-minute production, and director Jiles R. King II and his first-level ensemble wring all that and a powerful reminder of the ongoing need for humans to grow up and face the reality of our past and our present.
Set on an unnamed island plantation colonized by America before the Civil War, Bondage is a provocative, juicy, scary play about the myths and terrors of slavery. Zuri (a bravely sensual Victoria Lloyd) and Emily (a playful, cravenly dependent Christina Cranshaw) are cousins by blood, sharing the same grandfather, the late founder of the slave-powered enterprise. Zuri’s skin is almost as white as Emily’s, but that slight color difference makes her the slave and Emily her master. Or does it?
From the outset, we learn that the girls, both motherless, grew up playing together, but though they share the same bed, it’s clear that 13-year-old Zuri has to wait on 12-year-old Emily, hand and hair. She combs Emily’s long curls dutifully, and covers her own dark hair, with a turban. “My hair makes me a slave,” she tells Azucar (Rhoda Boutte, somehow both comically aware and wearily resigned), the older and wiser housekeeper. She knows too well that “life is labor.”
The old woman sympathizes with Zuri’s urge for freedom, but advises her strongly on the ways of white folks — women and men — when it comes to promises and sex. Zuri is also constantly beset by leers and forced lap-sitting by Philip (a painfully sex-deprived Jim Jorgensen), Emily’s widowed father who lusts after his child servant and also wants to get off the island he inherited. Could he and Zuri go to Bombay together? Is he disgusting AND crazy?
Emily calls Zuri her sister, and begs Zuri to show her how to dance and tell her stories in the “secret “ language she hears her speaking with Azucar. (All the actors, in fact, speak perfectly British-inflected English throughout the play. Alone, Azucar and Zuri, drop into a sort of Creole accent.) Emily’s deep wish to merge her own identity with Zuri’s is made flesh in a brilliant image of mimicry and puppetry. Who’s pulling the strings? Who’s on top? Who got her period first? Is this bondage?
Into this incestuous sexual tension steps Emily’s aunt Ruby (a fierce, commanding Kristi Funk Dana), shouting at her drunken brother-in-law and furious to see the intimacy of his daughter and her impudent servant. If Zuri has her sudden epiphanies about fire and barns, Aunt Ruby has her psychic moments, too. She literally sniffs herself into a kind of righteous frenzy. Everybody in the play has a heightened sense of smell, sniffing each other for clues. No actual odor is released in the play, but Finch’s loaded language makes it seem so.
Robert Winn’s simple set design and Steve Woods’ vivid lighting design use the iconic columns in Undermain’s intimate basement theater to create a moody mansion. Costume designer Ava-Robert-Kamaria outfits the players in richly detailed period clothes. Sara J. Romersberger, the show’s intimacy and movement director, earns her keep bigtime in this show, particularly in the scenes with the slavering old master and his tempting teenage slave. The show is for grown-ups with some theater experience of their own.
Of course, this boiling pot of race, gender, and family boils over the top. Ruby’s ugly racism and delight in punishment coupled with Phillip’s slovenly oblivion demand reproval. Who better to dream up a brutal ending than two adolescent cousins – one black, one white — chock full of lore about “bleeding” and family secrets and a fixation on hair?
This unsettling play is a show you need to see to learn from.
Bondage runs through October 15, for tickets and information, check www.Undermain.org or call 214-747-5515.