Créole

In 1831 Virginia an intelligent young slave girl, Cora, belongs to a judge named Lucius, the kindest slave owner the South ever did see. Cora’s attracted to fellow slave Tom, who has dreams of escaping and running to New York and definitely has designs on her, but also develops a crush on her worldly, widowed owner, who’s intrigued by the precocious girl. Cora convinces Lucius to teach her to read, and the two seem to fall in love, when suddenly Nat Turner’s slave rebellion engulfs them all with tragic consequences.

M.E.H. Lewis’s play is, if anything, perhaps too tightly structured. The playwright is so determined to show us all sides of each character’s moral view—explicitly echoing themes and lines among the militant slaves, complacent slaves and well-meaning owners—that we find ourselves wishing for a caricature or a villain or a moral absolute to come along. As in her 2006 Jeff winner Fellow Travelers (with Stage Left Theatre), everyone is right in some ways and wrong in others, and we start to wonder what we’re meant to take from the play.

This is not to say Créole is unaffecting. We’re drawn into the story largely due to the complex, riveting performances of the five central actors (five more dancers and a multitalented percussionist add visual and aural flavor but little content). Director Mitch Golob’s cast definitely sends our hearts racing along with Lewis’s melodrama, but in a story about the despicable practice of slavery where everyone’s hearts are in sort of the right place, we’re not sure what we’re supposed to learn.