A first lady fever dream scorches the stage at Chicago’s Steppenwolf
Welcome to Curtain Call, our mostly queer take on the latest openings on Broadway and beyond.A renewed interest in our country’s formative years unearths itself on stages across the country.
Broadway soon welcomes an all-female/nonbinary production of 1776, the Tony Award-winning musical about our founding fathers reimagined through the creative lens of co-directors Diana Paulus and Jeffery L.
Page. And in Chicago, Steppenwolf presents playwright James Ijames’ The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington, a takedown of the original first lady as seen through a time-jumping kaleidoscope.Ijames spent eight years working at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, and it was here that he first gained interest in Washington’s relationship with her slaves.
While the president declared the manumission of his slaves upon his death, Martha made no such promise of those part of her dower share — 84 inherited slaves from her first husband Daniel Park Custis.“I found a letter between Abigail Adams and Mary Cranch where they were discussing that Martha thought that her slaves were trying to kill her,” Ijames said. “And I was like, ‘That’s spicy.’ And I thought that would make a good play.”Related: How James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-Winning ‘Fat Ham’ Flips the script on ‘Hamlet’A two-dimensional façade of Mount Vernon rises at the beginning of Miz Martha to reveal the first lady (Cindy Gold) with a hacking cough, attended to by Ann Dandridge (Nikki Crawford) — both slave and half-sister.
