Ameriville Play Review

By Madeleine Barry

On a liquid stage, two tables and three chairs sat, and as the lights dimmed four people came stalking down the isle, singing “the water is rising”. By the end of the production, I believed them. This play was a stroke of genius in every way.

 This play was created after a group of journalists had explored the “wastelands” of America, then attempting to crunch all of the experience down into 90 minutes, an amazing feat only creatable by the best playwrights. Touching on many old and/or forgotten problems of the American people, our beliefs, and government, this quartet breaths life back into the silent forgotten troubles of thousands of trouble ridden American citizens, beginning with the plight of the victims of the hurricane Katrina, all but forgotten over these five years, and running through the faultiness of pride, the excess denial of the truth and what is really happening, the plight of the homeless, and the children in America who don’t even have a decent place to play let alone proper food sources. Thought provoking and stunningly raw, this play hid no modern day tribulations from the audience, telling it just the way it is through fusion hip hop music with many other styles mixed in and poetry so brutally honest about the people who live but are “already dead”.

Those who did not enjoy the play as much made the argument that the plot jumped around too much, however I see that as a positive as it added to the plays force, in that there really is a whirl wind of problems America leaves to drag behind the newest craze. The sheer volume of problems, I feel, was meant to hit you all at once so that the onlooker could realize that something needs to be done, that we need to find a new system with the aid of the forgotten American. Uprooting the traditional way of thinking, these four stunningly talented actors/ singers portray the victimization of the American people at the hands of their own government and big buisness with such proficiency and a level of justice to reality that I could feel the people they were portraying all around me. Here, in America, where the “rules are fixed” and people are easily forgotten or purposely left out of consideration, it was a breath of fresh air to see such honesty put on stage, where as on television, the veil “protecting you” is thick. Such forgotten people as the Latino people, the homeless, and the children, who have fallen victim to a system not even their own, have clearly not been lost. This is not an option; you MUST see this play, that is, if you have any desire for the truth.