Theater Review by Stuart Miller . . . .
Greed, for lack of a better word, is the American way. And it always has been, even before there was an America, as Mary Kathryn Nagle posits in the flawed but riveting and powerful new play, Manahatta, now playing at The Public Theater.
Nagle’s play beautifully intercuts two stories, one in the 17th century and one in the 21st, with a uniformly skilled cast playing characters whose lives parallel each other thematically and with artful direction that uses costumes and set to show how the two worlds are on a collision course as the play races toward its conclusion.
The Dutch West India Company is doing brisk business trading with the native Lenape tribe but they want more, more, more. “There’s no such thing as enough in the New World,” says ruthless boss man Peter Minuit (Jeffrey King), embarking on a plan to “buy” the island from people who don’t believe in ownership (he willfully strides right past any miscommunications), impose a tax, murder the dissenters and then “build a wall” to keep those interlopers out of the New World.
A banking behemoth (gradually revealed to be Lehman Brothers) is doing brisk business but wants more, more, more. “There’s no such thing as enough on Wall Street,” says ruthless boss man Dick Fuld (King again), overseeing a strategy of predatory lending through subprime mortgages, mortgage-backed securities and derivatives to reap huge profits—leaving working and middle-class Americans to ultimately pay the price.
Driving the narrative in each story is an ambitious young Native woman, Jane Snake and her ancestor Le-le-wa’-you (Elizabeth Frances). Jane is a brilliant mathematician who has gone to MIT and Stanford, then finally breaches that wall, landing a plum Wall Street job at Lehman Brothers. All the while her family back home in Oklahoma plunges into despair and then crisis, despite the efforts of her childhood friend and tentative suitor, Luke (Enrico Nassi). Le-le-wa’-you enthusiastically takes up trading furs with the Dutch, despite warnings from her husband Se-ket-tu-may-qua that the Europeans should never be trusted.
The play navigates tricky terrain and is largely successful as long as the dual narrative is propelling forward at a high-octane pace. For starters, while Jane is the protagonist and we start out rooting for her to succeed despite the doubts and casual racism of white men like Fuld and her direct boss Joe Gregory (Joe Tapper), we eventually realize that she has crossed to the dark side and is eagerly employing her skills to facilitate the Great Recession that will devastate so many families, including her own. Jane’s mother, Bobbie (Sheila Tousey) tells Luke that indigenous people need people like him who strive to “walk in both worlds”—he is learning the Lenape language that white America tried to extinguish while enjoying the fruits of success working for a local bank, where he tries bringing a humane outlook. The implication is that Jane is a lost soul, walking only in the white world. (In one memorable touch, after the Dutch start killing the Lenape, Le-le-wa’-you holds a victim, then seamlessly transitions back into Jane at the Lehman office as the financial crisis explodes and she literally has blood on her hands.)
But the play’s ending underscores the flaw of cramming so much action and history into a one-act play. When Jane rushes home, checkbook in hand, to play savior to her family, the final scene feels just that: rushed. Bobbie’s prideful reaction is understandable yet unrealistic, and the fact that there’s no aftermath there leaves a hole. Then Jane is back at Lehman for a final speech, a moment of reckoning that feels unearned and tacked on. It’s in that moment that the play’s shortcomings in character development come more sharply into focus—it’s perfectly fine that Minuit and Fuld are reduced to cardboard villains, especially since Gregory and his Dutch counterpart are, while still sketches, more nuanced. But we need a deeper understanding of what is driving Jane, her sister Debra (Rainbow Dickerson), Bobbie and Luke; that might force the play toward a more honest and detailed conclusion.
In recent years, Native Americans have finally gotten their voices heard, most notably with the great TV series, “Reservation Dogs.” (There’s also the series “Rutherford Falls,” the plays of Larissa Fasthorse and, to a lesser extent, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which was written and directed by white men.) There’s a need for far more representation, especially when the writer, like Nagle, has a distinctive and powerful point of view, a voice that can create a show, despite its shortcomings, entertains, informs and provokes in equal measure.
Manahatta. Through December 23 at The Public Theater’s Anspacher Theater (425 Lafayette Street at Astor Place). www.publictheater.org
Photos: Joan Marcus
