Some neighborhoods are given evocative names. Chicago has Back of the Yards, once adjacent to its notorious stockyards and not that far from Bubbly Creek, where methane and hydrogen sulfide gas once caused the South Fork of the Chicago River to make like a hot tub.
At the east end of West Chester, Pennsylvania, there is a neighborhood known simply as Mud Row, named after its location on the swampy banks of Goose Creek. In the early 20th century, this was where most Black residents lived, and a house therein is the location for Dominique Morisseau’s play of that name, the latest production from the Chicago theater company known as Remy Bumppo.
Morisseau’s play, which dates back to 2019 and was penned to fulfill a commission offered by People’s Light Theatre in Malvern, Pennsylvania, takes place in a living room. The twist here is that the action is derived from two different points in history, switching back and forth between eras and ultimately melding the two.
The lead characters are two pairs of sisters; one set lives in the house in the early 1960s and the other in the contemporary era. Issues explored here are the racist roots of American real estate, the rise of the civil rights movement, the price paid by radicals who risk their personal safety for a cause, and the paradoxes of gentrification. In this case, a neighborhood once known by a pejorative eventually becomes highly desirable to those seeking more affordable housing close to Philadelphia. All these are potent themes for an evening of theater.
I’m a fan of Morisseau’s suite of plays about Detroit, a city she knows and understands like no other playwright working today. “Mud Row,” though, feels more like the fulfillment of a commission and thus more of local interest.
The structure of using a house with residents from different eras is hardly unique, nor is the catalyst of a death and a legacy. Once you see that one sister is a squatter and the other an owner via their shared grandmother’s legacy, you certainly clock where this two-act play will be going long before you arrive. Morisseau is a pedagogic writer with a clear sense of moral rectitude: the lessons here are very clear and frequently articulated directly by the characters.
Director Malkia Stampley’s production could mitigate those issues if it had higher stakes, much faster pacing and more bite, but the production has slow transitions and, at least at the performance I saw, the actors never really fire up as I think they should and could.
Tiffany Renee Johnson, Ayanna Bria Bakari, Toccara Castleman and Alexis Janae are all big talents who have their potent moments on Sydney Lynne’s set, as do Jabari Khaliq and Jamaque Thomas, playing the men who weave their own lives around a family buffeted by the past and the present. Morisseau, who knows her way around a potent situation, has written several scenes of dramatic confrontation. What is needed in this production is more risk and unpredictability, the lifeblood of the theater.
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Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
Review: “Mud Row” (2.5 stars)
When: Through Nov. 15
Where: Remy Bumppo at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Tickets: $38-$54 at 773-975-8150 and theaterwit.org