The Black Rep’s Behind the Sheet will leave you shaken. It should.
It’s playwright Charly Evon Simpson’s story of a pre-Civil War physician and surgeon who is attempting to repair an injury that sometimes happens during childbirth. These days, having delivery create a fistula, or opening, between the birth canal and rectum and/or urethra is rare, but obstetrics was very different then. Fistulae create a near-continuous leakage of those bodily products and no one had even done serious work on attempting to close such an opening. “Women parts” were pretty much terra incognita to physicians – the first American woman graduated medical school in 1849, a year after this play ends.
It all sounds very selfless of the fictional Dr. George Barry, who is based on the real Dr. Marion Sims, who tackled this problem. But...no. He’s trying to figure out how to fix fistulae by using slave women as subjects. He buys women with fistulae and operates on them over and over again trying to find a technique that works. Not with their consent, of course. They can’t refuse these procedures – done with no anesthesia, by the way. They’re slaves.
Barry is played by Jeff Cummings. The closest thing he has to a nurse is Philomena, a house slave, part of what he acquired when he married his wife. Tall and self-contained, dignified for someone so young, she’s portrayed by Chynna Palmer. And she’s quite pregnant. It’s Barry’s child.
It is not just Barry’s assaults on his subjects that makes us realize even more the horror of slavery. It’s personified in a moment between Barry and Philomena when he reaches out to touch her cheek as she knows she cannot pull away. She has to tolerate his touch, which surely burns her soul. The moment summarizes the matter better than a three page monologue. Palmer is utterly magnetic in the moment.
The other enslaved women are far from a Greek chorus here. From the frosty, suspicious Dinah, here Patience Davis, to the seemingly snippy Betty, Alex Jay, they know they’re all in this together, but they’re still individuals, beaten-down or not. Another slave, Lewis, a loner, does appreciate the strength of Philomena, and waits patiently, courtesy of Brian McKinley.
Why is Barry doing this? Yes, for glory, he admits, and to be able to heal the wives of people like other plantation owners damaged from their obstetrical disasters. When his assistant, Ryan Lawson-Maeske, says he has heard that ether is being used to ease the suffering of childbirth, Barry says that will be even better for such women. Not for the women he owns, of course, their “constitutions” can tolerate pain so much better.
As well as a fine cast, director Ron Himes has put together a first-rate production staff, with a fascinating set from Peter and Margery Spack that’s lit beautifully by Joe Clapper. Lamar Harris’ sound design is particularly satisfying, stroking our emotion into openness.
We’re beginning to learn that trauma can create changes embedded in our DNA. Surely seeing something like this helps us understand, if not the how of that, then surely the why.
Behind the Sheet
through April 3
The Black Rep
Berges Theater at COCA
6880 Washington Ave, University City
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