NY Review: AND I AND SILENCE
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
"Sleep. Hit. Get hit. Hit back." This is the life of women in prison—and, for that matter, out of prison—according to Naomi Wallace's And I and Silence.
I'll spare you all the lame orange-is-the-new-black remarks, since this women-in-prison-play is only about as interesting as that first line.
It begins in a stark set parked between two facing halves of the audience, a device presumably emphasizing the split in the characters: two teenagers and their two adult selves, one white, one black, who are first in a literal prison, then in a figurative one. More dualities: hope and despair, haves and have-nots, male and female. The issues of gender, sexuality, poverty and racism are all stirred into the mix, but there is nothing here we haven't heard before. The idea that once in prison, always in prison is the central idea here, adding that mid-20th century racism intensifies their lack of freedom;they can't even walk down the street together. The play's best dialogue is its doom laden conclusion:
"We got to get away."
"This is away."
Young Dee (Emily Skeggs) pursues Young Jamie (Trae Harris) in stolen moments while they are both incarcerated, finally convincing her they could be friends and make a life together once they're out. Nine years pass and we find Dee (Samantha Soule) and Jamie (Rachel Nicks) sharing a grim little cell-like room and working as servants, cleaning houses for exploitative rich people, trying to find pride in how "gracefully" they dust.
Caitlin McLeod's direction emphasizes Wallace's pretentious experiments with dialogue, like rhyming and extreme accents, which, combined with the actors' posing, creates a dramatic texture that calls too much attention to itself. There is endlessly repeated washing of clothes and (uh-oh) of feet.
The casting is peculiar, in that all four women look about the same age but the older Dee and Jamie look and sound nothing like the younger Dee and Jamie. The young Jamie sounds very contemporary with lots of attitude (despite that this is the 1950s), although the older Jamie looks and sounds far more rooted in the era but oddly seems to have lost most of her regional accent.
Wallace's syntactically impossible title comes from an Emily Dickenson poem. She has borrowed liberally from her theatrical betters as well: Fugard's Blood Knot is the most glaring appropriation as the two women playact the social cruelties they are subjected to, exercising a power and revenge unavailable to them in the outside world. And Wallace echoes Genet's The Maids as well, adding in the eroticism of their friendship as well as the role-playing games.
Signature Theatre won this year's Tony Award for best regional theater, and the Linney is one of several venues in their beautiful new multiplex; the Signature is well worth a visit, but not for this play.
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Signature Theatre, 10th Ave. & 42nd St. Through 9/14. Tickets $25. Information: 212-244-7529 or www.signaturetheatre.org