As the lights come on, we discover two women half-buried in the sand—that’s one woman more than the miserly Samuel Beckett featured in “Happy Days.” But Beckett’s semi-subterranean Winnie faced only the horrors of eternity. For Angela and Odessa, the main characters in Charly Evon Simpson’s “Sandblasted,” which had its world premiere on Broadway on Sunday, the problem is closer to home.
A lot closer: not even at arm’s length, you might say. Because less than a minute into the action, it’s that appendage that falls from Angela’s body like an overripe fruit from a tree.
Kudos to the prosthetic designer, Matthew Frew, for the lifelike limb, and to Simpson for the flash of surreal humor at the beginning of a play that aims to be a Beckettian comedy about black women in extremis. If it doesn’t work, it’s not because of a lack of trying.
For me it tries too hard. The central metaphor — that black women literally fall apart — is being diligently explored, but the issues it might give weight, like Angela and Odessa, remain buried in the sand. Random racist violence and the increased infant mortality rate are checked by name only.
Which is not to say that every play about black women has to be a tragic news bulletin. In some ways, it’s a relief that when Angela and Odessa rise from the sand, there is a pleasant interplay between them. There isn’t much development, though, unless you count the further shedding of body parts. Angela (Brittany Bellizeare) loses her nose and a toe; Odessa (Marinda Anderson) holds her arm, but occasionally drops a finger.
The women are strangers at first, having come to the same beach in search of the sand and fresh air they’ve heard could slow down the process of their seemingly epidemic condition. They both fit the risk group: stressed out black women, especially those who live in big cities. Although accompanied by common disasters, they are polar opposites: Odessa blingy, fatalistic and cool; Angela nerdy, anxious and eager to please. She calls herself a “security cat” as opposed to a “scare cat.”
But with the beach treatment more or less a failure, they nevertheless went on a crazy mission together to seek the advice and care of an Oprah-esque wellness guru named Adah. Adah, who claims to be “somewhere under 100” in age, is unaffected by the disease and has become a popular source of inspiration writing books, lecturing (“Girl, Stop Falling Apart!”) and preaching the dark gospel of self-help.
Yet “sandblasted” is not a satire of Oprah or Oprahism; especially as portrayed by former news anchor and talk show host Rolonda Watts, Adah is at least as warm as she is sentimental. You can’t help but like her, even if she’s oblivious to the way her privilege affords isolation and her precepts prove puzzling and fickle. Joining Angela and Odessa on a journey that seems more spiritual than medical, she suggests traveling east. Oh wait, no, west. Somewhere.
The piece is similarly idiosyncratic: the path is arbitrary at times, the chronology distorts for no reason. Angela and Odessa also seem jumbled up; they exchange points of view in their arguments, perhaps to maintain the appearance of conflict where little exists. Vibrant disagreement only comes into play when Angela’s playboy brother does; Jamal (Andy Lucien) attends an Adah lecture so he “appears more understanding when I go on a date” and tries to pick up Odessa, who he doesn’t have, who he also happens to meet at the bar where he works.
The actors, led by Summer L. Williams, are all fun, making the most of characterful lyrics when provided, and doing what they can with the big gulps of self-assured poetry Simpson otherwise asked of them.
And “sandblasted” – a co-production of Vineyard and Women’s Project theaters – looks pretty too, the surreal landscape rendered in Matt Saunders’ scenery by mounds of sand, a cotton ball sky and doors and windows cut into the cycloramic horizon. The witty costumes (by Montana Levi Blanco) and alfresco lighting (by Stacey Derosier) help counteract the vagueness of time and location. Despite those bliss, the piece, with 18 scenes totaling an hour and 40 minutes, is too long for its own good, a problem unsolved by sloppy pacing and rough transitions.
Not everyone will feel this way. Some people in the audience on the night I attended expressed their appreciation with murmurs and snaps of the fingers for the well-played sentences and tender eulogies about taking care of each other and seizing the day. And while I found the accumulation of metaphors oppressive, I have to admit that they are eye opening. A particularly comprehensive one introduced me to the phenomenon of fulgurites: glass tubes formed underground when lightning strikes sand.
In the context of ‘sandblasted’ they are clearly meant to symbolize black women themselves, the lightning strike of disaster fused with their own nature to make something beautiful and precious – and all too often buried.
sandblasted
Until March 13 at the Vineyard Theater, Manhattan; vineyardtheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.