Through May 27
cullud wattah Lorna C. Hill Theatre/Ujima Company
The tale of the contaminated water in Flint, Michigan is often the story of politicians, chemists and bureaucrats seeking a way to save money on drinking water and botching it.
Actually, it’s the story of the people who stood in lines, year after year, to get bottled water and put up with the physical damage of dirty water in showers and kitchen sinks.
Those are the people Erika Dickerson-Despenza writes about in “cullud wattah,” Ujima Theatre’s closing show of the season.
The central character in the play is a long-term employee in the GM complex in Flint, a heavy user of water.
Only later in the show does that become a key point.
Marion (Shanntina Moore) supports her mother, Big Ma (Verneice Turner), her pregnant sister Ainee (Dayatra Hassan) and her two children, Reesee (Brooklyn Walker) and cancer-stricken Plum (Janae Leonard).
It’s not easy to make it all work financially and the costs of the cases of bottled water needed for life make it even harder.
Even Thanksgiving is planned in terms of the number of water bottles needed to prepare the bird and have dinner.
These are people whose morale is down to nothing and the playwright emphasizes that with audio from different meetings and public hearings and legislative sessions of the public officials arguing, as the years go by.
On stage, Dickerson-Despenza shows this with cast members reciting the continuing dates of no solution but plenty of arguing.
Finally, the people decide to take the situation into their own hands, including Ainee, who is angry at Marion for giving precedence to her new GM position carrying a hefty pay hike, making life easier for her family.
The pregnant sister doesn’t seem to give her sister credit for the back-breaking work which is keeping the others fed and housed and warm.
She also doesn’t seem to draw any connection between the water and her six unsuccessful pregnancies.
The play is a throwback to the old days of “kitchen sink” dramas, of family pain and tragedy in the home, although the script is longer than necessary.
Director Curtis Lovell has a solid cast to work with, particularly Moore and Turner.
It goes off on one of the most elaborate sets I have ever seen in a Ujima play, basically the entire family home, making full use of the Lorna C. Hill Theatre.
Like all plays built around tragedies like Flint’s water crisis, the story of “cullud wattah” can be about the suits or the victims.
Here, it’s about the victims, which makes it worth seeing.
A.W.
© Copyright 2023 - Speakupwny.com
hosted by Online Media, Inc
Buffalo Web Design and Web Hosting
Top of Page
|
