I went into “In the Red and Black Water” wanting to love it. I was determined to love it. And during the course of the show I often found it both visually and aurally beautiful. And I told myself, “This is a good play.” But at the same time I was telling myself that, my mind was drifting and I found myself thinking of other things. So I can’t help but question if the play was really as successful and engaging as I’d hoped it would be and as I was in the moment trying to believe it was.

The first act got me hooked, and I was really excited to watch the journey of Oya, the young female track star. But the play defied expectations. And not in a good way. Reflecting on the play afterwords, I realized that in the second act the main character wasn’t active at all. She had two wants – one was pregnancy, the other was love and companionship from a man.  Now, you would think these two wants kind of go together – but neither these two wants, nor the pursuit of them were intertwined in any way.

So, to recap, she had two different wants, which already doesn’t make for a great driving through line. And she pursued neither of these actively. Perhaps this was a decision made to make a statement about human nature, or about the plight of young African-Americans growing up in the projects in Louisiana (a location which, by the way, was difficult to discern from the text). But watching an entire second act of mourning and of lamenting that one is not getting what one wants when one is not pursuing it at all, is not particularly engaging.

This production was helped greatly by the addition of beautiful singing, and by commendable performances by truly talented actors. That should not be over-looked. Additionally, the unusual choice of having the actors say their stage directions out loud made the show, I suppose, more interesting. It definitely lent a texture to the piece, which was on the surface well-written in it’s often poetic dialog. “In the Red and Brown Water” tells a sad story, but at the end, I was also sad because the play started off with so much potential, so many places to go, and such a truly talented and dazzling cast.