Overview
- Ro Reddick’s play-with-music opened March 10 at MCC Theater’s Newman Mills Theater in a co-production with Clubbed Thumb and Page 73, running through March 29 under director Knud Adams.
- The production follows Reddick’s 2026 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, adding momentum to a remount that originated at Clubbed Thumb’s 2025 Summerworks festival.
- The cast features Alana Raquel Bowers as Meek, Will Cobbs as Smooch, Lizan Mitchell as Puddin, Andy Lucien as Clay, and Crystal Finn as Virgie, with an onstage trio of Grace McLean, Suzzy Roche, and Nina Ross led by Ellen Winter.
- Set in Syracuse in 1987, the story uses a three-member choir and original songs to frame a Black family’s political and personal rifts alongside Cold War anxieties.
- Reviews praise the performances, choral device, and Afsoon Pajoufar’s set with Brenda Abbandandolo’s costumes plus lighting and sound by Masha Tsimring and Kathy Ruvuna, while several critics cite narrative and tonal unevenness in the 95-minute, no‑intermission staging.