By Marilyn Jozwik
Next Act Theatre has a knack for presenting plays that are dense with ideas, all sorts of seeds that can grow into thoughtful discussions of important, relevant issues, all the while providing top-notch, incredibly imaginative entertainment.
In its season opener, “Splash Hatch on the E Going Down” by Kia Corthron, Next Act pulls the curtain back on a black family caught in the ill effects of poverty. Cheryl Lynn Bruce directs.
Thyme (Jada Jackson) and her friend Shaneequa (Malaina Moore) share their thoughts on water birth in a scene from Next Act’s “Splash Hatch on the E Going Down.”
The center of the story is Thyme (Jada Jackson), a smart-teenager who is married and pregnant. She and her husband, Erry (Joseph Brown Jr.), live with her parents, Marjorie (Kristin E. Ellis) and Ollie (James Carrington), in a Harlem tenement. Thyme has taken up the banner for conservation and environmental responsibility. She doesn’t believe in pets, circuses or zoos (“abducting animals for our entertainment”); wasting resources (why flush the toilet after every use?) and pollution (she enumerates the amount of garbage created by a simple fast-food meal.). She gets on her soap box about the toxic lead from old paint that fills the old tenement house in which she lives. With her social awareness and insatiable thirst for knowledge, she is not your typical poor, pregnant teenager.
Her pregnancy has made Thyme more keenly aware of the world her baby will live in. She studies topics concerning her baby and the environment tirelessly, causing her husband to remark, “Libraries will never go out of style with you!” She can recite facts and figures regarding waste (the U.S. has 6 percent of the world’s population but consumes almost half of its resources). She bemoans the loss of our natural world, saying we are “bending nature to our needs. If it don’t bend, we break it.”
Thyme (Jada Jackson) and her father (James Carrington) in a scene from Next Act’s “Splash Hatch on the E Going Down.”
She is obsessed with having a water birth (splash hatch), believing it to be the most natural way for a baby to enter the world. “We are water; we came from the sea,” she says. But while Thyme focuses on the environment and her baby, her unemployed husband finds a job that plays havoc with his health, as does the toxic area in which they live, another by-product of poverty and tenement living.
Corthron gives Jackson’s young Thyme a heavy load of information as Thyme tries to convert anyone who will listen – her husband, parents and best friend Shaneequa (Malaina Moore), even the audience – to her mission of environmental responsibility and awareness of environmental racism. Everyone around Thyme is a sounding board. Jackson keeps her youthful energy and enthusiasm, but the barrage of facts becomes a bit overwhelming. Yet, Jackson is a marvelous conduit for Corthron’s often elegant and poetic prose.
Jackson and Brown as the youthful couple are a wonderful pairing as they sweetly navigate her pregnancy and his illness. As Thyme’s friend, Shaneequa, Moore strikes just the right attitude that creates tension as well as tender and light moments between the two friends sharing their pregnancy experiences. Their bathtub scene and baby-bump tussle cement the bond they share.
As Thyme’s parents, Ellis and Carrington give Jackson’s Thyme a wide berth to express herself as their characters maintain a loving household while scraping by.
Brian Sidney Bembridge’s scenic design features a backdrop of lit squares, a creative, pleasing visual which nicely symbolizes the neighborhood of cramped quarters for its residents and a backdrop for the sparse furnishings in Thyme’s home.
If you go:
Who: Next Act Theatre
What: “Splash Hatch on the E Going Down”
When: Through Oct. 15
Where: 255 S. Water St., Milwaukee
Info/Tickets: 414-278-0765; info@nextact.org