Review: 'The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington'

Show: “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington” at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Theatre in Garrison, N.Y.

What Is It?: New play by James Ijames, directed by Taylor Reynolds.

Of Note: This is the last season of the theater before it relocates to its new home in the area next summer.

Theater’s description: “In his will, George Washington included an order to free his enslaved people upon his wife’s death. Christmas Eve, 1800: George Washington is dead, Martha is battling a wicked fever, and those who have been held in bondage at Mount Vernon wait for the end to come, and the promised hour of liberation. As the night goes on, Martha moves through a fever dream of dizzying theatricality, exploring the hideous and enduring ramifications of America’s original sin.”

Big Picture: Think “A Christmas Carol” without the redemptive ending, though one imagines it’s for the audience to learn these historic lessons and take them to heart. It’s less a morality play than a darkly comic exorcism.

Storyville: Martha (Nance Williamson, v era good in her mad, emotional pivots) is on her deathbed, or so we think, tended by some of her several hundred slaves, especially Ann Dandridge (Britney Simpson) who is also Martha’s half-sister, a fact that Martha brushes off.. Meanwhile, several other slaves count the minutes before Martha exits this mortal world so they will finally have their long-promised freedom.

During this dark night of the soul,. Martha rallies and enters surreal state where she confronts her weighty heritage. In her crazed dreamscape her slaves take on many roles, including that of game show host, familiar Revolutionary figures, and even a few royals. Tables are chillingly turned when Martha is up for grabs at a slave auction. And in a kind of Looney Tunes People’s Court, her slaves take on the role of prosecutor, defense lawyer and judge when her actions are placed on tria. (There’s even a cameo appearance from George W. (a very funny Brandon St. Clair).

There’s energy in the production but the playing is mostly exhaustingly broad. Though there are some moments of theatrical sting by playwright Ijames, who also wrote “Fat Ham,” “TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever,” this freshly contexturized historic material lacks the emotional depth, satiric polish and surprise and dramatic deconstructs by writers such as George C. Wolf, Jeremy O. Harris, Brandon Jacob Jenkins and Suzan Lori Parks.

Big Picture, Part 2: The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s shows are presented in an open tent on beautiful grounds of the Boscobel House and Gardens, in Garrison, N.Y. The masked audience looks down at the stage and just beyond the action sees the pristine riverscape and mountains of the Hudson River Valley beyond. From this perch, the view is absent of development, probably looking not much different from the period that the play takes place, which gives the nature of this piece a powerfully sad and haunted quality of time and lives lost.

Who will like it?: Those who like their history righted, with a healthy slice of satire.

Who won’t?: Those hoping for something more probing, more revisionist than easy ironies.

For the kids?: Sharper students might enjoy the broad strokes; best of all, they will be informed by these awfull truths, too absent from their history books.