THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Play by Suzan-Lori Parks
Studio 1, Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, London E8 3DL until June 8, 2024
We are all of us, at this point in 2024, mired in the blood and guts of identity politics. Whether it be gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion, this is the iron-clad and inescapable truth of today's post-truth world. Suzan Lori Parks' play, Book of Grace, currently on at the Arcola Theatre in Hackney, will not wash our souls clean of the mudslinging polarising mess in which we all find ourselves covered, but it will challenge and help us, through an utterly gripping story that is both challenging and uncomfortable, to navigate through and emerge from the culture war primordial ooze in order to rediscover our own humanity. It will go a long way towards purging the negativity we pick up along the way as well.
This is a story that plays a lot with the idea of borders, in a period in history in which we are looking around our borders and trying to protect our borders while crackpot politicians try to convince us our borders are being invaded by a constant and steady stream of 'foreigners' and 'illegals', Parks takes this idea of boundaries and borders and makes it psychological as well as symbolic with a bit of blurring of the fourth wall border.
She tells the story here of Vet, a hard knocks, red-blooded Alpha male employee working for the border patrol on the Mexico/US border, and his much younger wife, the Grace of the title. Grace embodies that strand of American optimism, particularly on the part of women in abusive relationships, that constantly tries to embrace a sense of gratitude and claw the rays of sunshine where there's often too much darkness to countenance. One is reminded of The Color Purple, writing with faint hope to a God of perceived benevolence. Add to this the homecoming Vet's son, Buddy, from the army.
Buddy's arrival acts as a catalyst for a visceral and compelling clash between different strains of toxic masculinity, with Grace often caught in the middle trying to mediate between these two headstrong bulls constantly circling the ring, Vet constantly trying to protect the borders and boundaries around his own fragile male ego.
All three actors in this production are magnificent. Peter De Jersey as the domineering Vet, is masterful as a tightly wound compressed powder keg of ominous male rage. Ellena Vincent is subtle and riveting in her portrayal of a woman clinging to a semblance of hope in a world that offers her little and Daniel Francis-Swaby, playing Buddy, is a revelation of balance and control as the encapsulation of a frustrated, angry son rising up against an oppressive father.
Book of Grace is confrontational theater at its best and forces us to awaken and to challenge the boundaries and borders we see increasingly being drawn around us and between us every day.
