by Carolyn Hayes Harmer

Article: 9599; Posted: April 19, 2015 at 4:00 p.m.

Local playwright Linda Ramsay-Detherage strikes quite a delicate balance in her latest play, “Sugarhill.” This tale of one mother’s tenuous journey back from loss manages to combine heartache, tenderness, cheeky humor, cultural evolution, and the dual grimness and possibility of the future into a single enigmatic fable.

In the enchanting world-premiere production at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, director Christopher Bremer and an incomparable cast send toughened hearts overflowing.

The setting is an idyllic plantation building in little Sugarhill, Louisiana. Designer Daniel C. Walker’s whitewashed scenic design and blazing lighting scheme convey an unseasonable December heat wave; sound designer Matt Lira’s palette of crickets and faraway noises lend a sense of remoteness. The year is 1941, and the world is again on the brink of upheaval. It’s becoming a bad time to be Jewish in faraway Europe, and it is still a very bad time to be black in the Deep South. But for now, this affectionately dilapidated household has problems enough at home–chief among them their lovely, broken Marietta.

Award-winning actress Inga R. Wilson has returned to Michigan for this production, and her turn in the starring role is tremendous. Marietta has just been released from the hospital after suffering an injury and then undergoing electroshock therapy to improve her mental state. As her family treats this frail specimen with kid gloves, Wilson adapts to her unreliable memory, pulsing in and out of fugue. Her hands flutter to ward off her evergreen grief: the absence of her recently dead son, an absentee husband rendered catatonic by a burst blood vessel.

A sweet series of coincidences heralds the arrival of a stranger (Jonathan West), a wounded black man on the lam from white aggressors. Marietta allows herself to believe that this outsider has a cosmic connection to her late son, and insists on providing Mr. Franklin with safe haven. The bulk of the play’s two acts charts Franklin’s brief visit with the family, which fosters organic opportunities for discovery, soul searching, and healing.

The surrounding characters have distinct aims, and their personalities come through not merely in speaking, but in deliberate listening and reacting. The result is a rich tapestry of character work by a stellar ensemble. As the sage family patriarch and the insolent nursemaid, Arthur Beer and Dominique Lowell form an amiably crotchety old comedy team. Pushy comic foil Sonja Marquis kills with culinary kindness, while authoritarian Joel Mitchell is at once politically slick and fiendishly vile. And as Marietta’s felled, mute husband, York Griffith’s work is nearly imperceptible, a marathon of restraint.

There are secrets in “Sugarhill” that are better left unspoiled; suffice it to say, the production is grounded in tenderness, but also wafts on an endearing air of mystery. The result is two bittersweet but satisfying hours — for all its heartbreaking resilience, this charming story ultimately infuses its audience with renewed faith in the virtue of optimism and compassion.

SHOW DETAILS:
Sugarhill
Jewish Ensemble Theatre
6600 West Maple Rd., West Bloomfield
April 15-May 10
Wednesday at 7:30 pm: May 6
Wednesday at 2:00 pm: April 29
Thursdays at 7:30 pm: April 23, 30
Friday at 7:30 pm: May 8
Saturdays at 5:00 pm: April 18, 25, May 2, 9
Saturdays at 8:30 pm: April 18, 25, May 2, 9
Sundays at 2:00 pm: April 19, 26, May 3, 10
Sunday at 7:00 pm: April 26
Price: $41-$48
(248) 788-2900
http://www.jettheatre.org