The Blood Quilt

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While Katori Hall’s last play, the 2021 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hot Wing King had an all-male cast, her new play now at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater has an all-female cast and feels more authentic. Set in 2015 on Kwemera Island, off the coast of Georgia, the four estranged Jernigan sisters meet three weeks after their mother’s funeral to create the quilt their mother had planned, a task they have always met to perform the first weekend in May as a family. However, this is the first year they are gathering without their mother, although to some it feels too soon. Directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz (Lincoln Center Theater’s The Skin of Our Teeth, Flex, Pipeline and Marys Seacole) the play is a fascinating study in family relationships, but at a little under three hours it feels long and repetitious. As of now, the writing is a little too leisurely in its development of the family secrets.

The siblings are actually step-sisters having had different fathers, their mother remarried several times. Clementine, the oldest, has lived and taken care of Mama Redell for the past seven years, without noticing that she hadn’t paid her taxes all this time. She is the peacemaker among them. Gio is a police officer in North Carolina attempting to shed herself of her problem husband Red; she also has a drinking problem and is angriest at their mother who treated her the worst.

The third sister, Cassan is an army nurse married to Chad who is never around as he is always reenlisting. As a result, she is bringing up her troubled, rebellious 15-year-old daughter Zambia alone. Zambia who is curious about many things has come with her, not expecting to be part of the quilting circle. The youngest sister Amber, an entertainment lawyer who lives in Los Angeles, has been absent for three years including their mother’s funeral.

To the surprise of all, Amber shows up for the quilting bee, unexpectedly and unannounced. It is she who has been helping out all of the others financially in secret, but this is coming to an end. It turns out that she has been chosen by their mother’s lawyer to read the will which will cause new complications among the sisters: who inherits what, who has been left out, and who has to pay the enormous debts. Secrets and revelations about all of them are disclosed in the course of the play and lead to various fights, arguments and reconciliations, as well as the sharing of memories both good and bad.

In the course of the play, the sisters plan and sew the last quilt that their mother planned. We learn a great deal about quilting and watch them work separately and together. Zambia is called in to join the quilting circle and learns about their blood ritual at the end, when they prick their fingers and sign their names in blood on the corner they each have made, the youngest signing the centerpiece. The play also takes a supernatural turn towards the end (very much like the ending of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson) when they think their mother’s spirit has returned to the house like a wind and it is making her demands.

Although the acting is excellent, cohesive and persuasive, not all the roles are equally written or fleshed out as we learn more about some and less about others. We learn the least about Crystal Dickinson’s Clementine whose role seems to be peacemaker mainly breaking up arguments among her sisters. Adrienne C. Moore’s Gio is thinly written, an angry woman who takes out her frustration in drink. We eventually find out why her mother treated her so badly but it is both too little and too late.

Susan Kelechi Watson (recently seen in James Ijames’ Good Bones at The Public Theater) is given one of the best roles as Cassan who is not only fleshed out but is given some revelations that deepen her character. As the youngest and the most sophisticated, Amber played by Lauren E. Banks ends up the central character both with her revelations and her cathartic changes. Not only is she the most competent and forceful, she has both the biggest secret and the biggest revelation. Mirirai’s Zambia is credible as the 15-year-old who is still looking to find herself and asks a great many leading questions.

Adam Rigg’s setting for both the upper and lower levels of the house on Kwemera Island has both positive and negative aspects. As a cabin with several rooms and with a view of the sea, the set works beautifully, but when the sisters are supposed to be outside on the porch or by the water’s edge the visuals are quite confusing. Montana Levi Blanco’s many costumes define the five women efficiently. Jiyoun Chang’s lighting along with Palmer Hefferan’s sound is best in creating the several storms we and the sisters experience in their stay in their mother’s house, while Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s projections successfully create the raging Atlantic Ocean.

Katori Halls’ The Blood Quilt is fine as a family drama about warring sisters who both love and resent the mother who has just died. However, as a story of secrets and revelations it takes a little too long to get where it is going. It could use more incidents and exposés to warrant its length which seems padded. Don’t blame the fine actresses who seem to be living their several roles.

The Blood Quilt (through December 29, 2024)

Lincoln Center Theater

Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, 150 W. 65^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.lct.org/shows/blood-quilt/

Running time: two hours and 45 minutes including one intermission