Zainab Jah in Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus
Signature Theatre’s Residency One program has, for twenty years, lavished a season’s worth of attention on one selected playwright. The current honoree is the Pulitzer-winning Suzan-Lori Parks (a verified genius, per the MacArthur Foundation). One of the many benefits of presenting a handful of plays over a concentrated period is that we get to see not only the “big hits” but some of the other work that paved the road to all that acclaim and all those awards.
Such is the case with Signature’s production of Venus, now at the Irene Diamond Stage. (The Signature season also included Park’s 1990 The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, in October.) Venus was first presented at George C. Wolfe’s Public back in 1996, winning the playwright an Obie Award. That production was less than successful, with the avant-garde director Richard Foreman and the avant-garde playwright apparently on different pages, visionary-wise.
Viewed today, with the author’s intentions presumably more intact than they were twenty years ago, Venus is revealed as an intriguing and arresting work. Playgoers who were understandably astonished by both the 2001 Topdog/Underdog (about two battling brothers named Lincoln and Booth) and the monumental 2014 Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3, will likely savor this earlier work. Not quite so accomplished as the two above-named plays, admittedly; but the playwright’s incisive, probing imagination matched with clearly inborn theatricality is very much in evidence.
Venus mixes real-life history (circa 1810) with real-life politics (circa 1990 but still current). Saartjie Baartman (1776?-1815) was a woman from Britain’s Cape Colony (now South Africa). She was brought to London in 1810 and exhibited in freak shows of the time as the “Hottentot Venus” (“Hottentot” being something of a racial slur). Prominently on display were her bare buttocks, which were said to be mammoth compared to Georgian standards, although newspaper caricatures of the day are somewhat too exaggerated to offer a clear picture. Two shillings admittance, and for an extra fee patrons could “touch” her.
Zainab Jah (with feather) and Randy Danson (right) in Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus
In Parks’ fictionalization, The Venus (as she is named in the script) is not thoroughly victimized; she is shown as a marginally willing participant, although while assenting she (and Parks) continually asks, “do I have a choice?” She is taken from Africa to the freak shows of London, and finally to Paris where she is subjected to medical studies in support of proving racial inferiority. She eventually dies, or is killed, so her remains can be macerated—“soaked in a chemical solution to separate the flesh from the bones”—and put on display. (Historical note: Baartman’s skeleton, brain and genitalia remained on show in Paris until 1976. Two decades later, Nelson Mandela petitioned for their return to her homeland, and she was eventually buried with honors in 2002.)
Parks tells her story in grand style, with four principals plus a very busy ensemble of seven playing multiple roles. Zainab Jah, who made her Broadway debut last spring in Eclipsed, is altogether wonderful as Venus. The action begins with her climbing into a fat suit—no nudity here—and the performance plays out on many levels. Jah lets us see Baartman consciously taking on the character of the Hottentot Venus—a side-show “freak”—for survival while retaining an inner core of humanity. As the play moves to Paris, she shows Venus blossoming until the harsh realities become apparent.
John Ellison Conlee, of The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence, is fine as the conflicted doctor who takes the girl to France; Kevin Mambo serves as the play’s moral conscience as The Negro Resurrectionist; and Randy Danson gives an incredibly rich performance as The Mother-Showman who runs the sideshow, as well as the South African who first enslaves the girl and the Doctor’s “chum” who forces the climax. Each of the others—sporting crayon-colored hair—makes strong contributions.
Director Lear deBessonet (resident director at the Public and artistic director of Public Works) does a masterful job, building a colorful and wild sideshow around the star attraction. Frequent deBessonet collaborator Matt Saunders places the action in a semi-circle that looks something like a stripped-down ballroom; Emilio Sosa (of Topdog/Underdog and On Your Feet!) provides a set of dazzling costumes; Justin Townsend (The Humans and The Little Foxes) enhances the proceedings with effective lighting; and helpful choreography comes from Danny Mefford (of Fun Home and Dear Evan Hansen).
Zainab Jah and John Ellison Conlee in Suzan-Lori Parks’ Venus
What strikes us most, though, is the sheer theatricality conjured twenty years ago by Parks: the magic comes not only from the dialogue but from the entire world which the playwright has envisioned. Venus, in several ways, is not unlike Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man. Joseph Merrick endured the same brutal treatment as a London side-show freak, although he first went on display seventy years after the Hottentot Venus. There are differences, though, prime among them being the fact that Merrick was clearly handicapped, while Venus—as drawn by Parks—was not. Which makes Venus affecting in a rather different manner, and a fascinating evening for those of us who marvel at Park’s Topdog and Father Comes Home from the Wars.
Suzan-Lori Park’s Venus opened May 15, 2017 at the Pershing Square Signature Center