The reviews are in for the ripple, the wave that carried me home, Christina Anderson’s memory play at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene. In 1992 a woman named Janice is asked to come home to Kansas for a ceremony naming a public pool after her late father, and the invitation sends her back through a childhood spent in the shadow of her parents’ campaign to integrate the town’s swimming pools. The critics split over the writing, which some find lyrical and others find over-narrated, but they are close to unanimous about the company of four, with Marinda Anderson, who doubles as Aunt Gayle and the relentless Young Chipper Ambitious Black Woman, the name that comes up most.
The verdict: six reviews in, and the field divides evenly down the middle. The Front Row Center, Culture Sauce and Exeunt NYC are taken with the play, and the two that score it do so generously, at 4.5 and four out of five. TheaterMania, Talkin’ Broadway and New York Theatre Guide admire its subject but find it talked through more than dramatized, with too much narration and too little heat. What nobody disputes is the cast: Alana Raquel Bowers, Crystal Lucas-Perry, Biko Eisen-Martin and, above all, Marinda Anderson are praised on both sides of the split. The New York Times had not reviewed it at the time of writing.
What are critics saying about the ripple, the wave that carried me home?
TheaterMania
"A Free-Floating Memory Play"
Reviewer: Kenji Fujishima
Kenji Fujishima finds the pools a fresh way into the civil-rights story, and he credits Greene with some striking stage pictures, including the cracks that open in the set as Janice drifts from her parents.
"The cast’s conviction in trying to bring Anderson’s vision to life is heartwarming…"
His reservation is the writing. In his view the play’s best ideas are discussed rather than acted out, and its self-conscious lyricism keeps them at a distance, so he admires the ensemble more than he is moved by the play.
The Front Row Center
"A glorious kaleidoscope that you will not soon forget"
Reviewer: Tulis McCall · 4.5 out of 5
Tulis McCall reads the play as a memoir rather than a conventional drama, one that asks what became of the children of civil-rights activists, and she is struck that the fight it describes took place in small-town Kansas.
"This is a superb cast in every way."
She admits the detail of dates and swimming pools sometimes lost her, but she is won over by the company, by Lawrence E. Moten III’s fluid set and by Greene’s direction, which she says is felt more than seen.
Culture Sauce
"finds hidden depths in a watery memory play"
Reviewer: Thom Geier · 4 out of 5
Thom Geier hears real poetry in Anderson’s writing and notes the bursts of violence beneath its calm surface, from unseen white antagonists and from inside Janice’s own family.
"the ripple, the wave that carried me home is worth the plunge."
He calls Bowers mesmerizing and Lucas-Perry haunting, credits Greene with drawing remarkable performances from all four actors, and enjoys the way the design turns the play’s water imagery into stage effects.
Talkin’ Broadway
"the play feels disconcertingly mild"
Reviewer: Marc Miller
Marc Miller thinks the play is at its best when it draws on Anderson’s own family history, but he finds the time-jumping awkward and the narration heavy, and he wants more flavor and less reportage from the writing.
"…in these pleasant, comparatively passive 90 minutes, it just stirs up a ripple."
He enjoys Aunt Gayle, who has most of the best lines, and Bowers’s three ages of Janice, but he feels Lucas-Perry and Eisen-Martin are given too little to play, and he finds the staging busy and the design short on period detail.
Exeunt NYC
"a powerful story of community and family, beautifully directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene"
Reviewer: Loren Noveck
Loren Noveck places the play beside the history of towns that closed their public pools rather than integrate them, and she follows how that fight turns into a rift inside one family.
"…eliciting compelling performances that convey all the layers of feeling in these characters."
She grants that the water metaphor sometimes swamps the story, but she argues that Greene’s steady hand and the production’s energy carry it, and she watches Bowers’s guarded adult Janice slowly open up.
New York Theatre Guide
"time can't wash away all grief"
Reviewer: Amelia Merrill
Amelia Merrill finds that the play holds more characters and memories than it can dramatize, leaving Bowers to carry long stretches of exposition, and she thinks the flashback dialogue turns heavy-handed.
"The cast at Playwrights Horizons is tuned to each other like an orchestra…"
She laughs at the gag with the landline phones, praises a fabulous Marinda Anderson and Moten’s set, and wonders whether the story would work better as a novel. She also wishes the production had used real water.
Production photographs by Marc J. Franklin.
For more on the production, see our first look at the ripple, the wave that carried me home at Playwrights Horizons.
the ripple, the wave that carried me home is playing at Playwrights Horizons’ Judith O. Rubin Theater, 416 West 42nd Street, through November 29.
