Mississippi Smiles

RunBoyRun Productions, Philadelphia, PA

Review by Mbeti Hyess

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New playwright/director Kamillah Abdul-Malik tackles some very difficult subjects in this unrelenting drama, which revolves around Mary (Tasha Holmes), the grown daughter of a violent man who’d beaten her mother and later his children. Mary, now a married mother of a six-year-old boy and pregnant again, has been perennially drawn to partners who abuse her emotionally and physically.

 

As the play opens, Mary is delivering a monologue to the audience about those painful childhood experiences and her current status as the wife of an abusive man, who even as she is about to give birth treats her with brutality and contempt. One day, she tells us, she decided to fight back, which has brought her to the jail cell from which she’s speaking.

 

After her release, she escapes the marriage, only to be drawn into a romance with Paulina (aka Paul, played by RacQuel Sasha), her first attraction to a lesbian. This transition would have made for an interesting exploration on its own, but it’s really not relevant to this story. What is relevant is that the new lover is jealous and possessive, yet wants to parent a baby with Mary.

 

Paulina convinces Mary to take extraordinary steps to become pregnant, yet — predictably — reacts violently when Mary’s relationship with the “baby daddy” gets a little too close. 

 

Two men, Darrell Shanks and Ra Lyons, each gamely play several supportive parts (none of them particularly endearing). 

 

This is a very ambitious first play, and with further workshopping could become quite a powerful one. The production company behind it, and two of the actors, brought Underground Episodes to the Ithaca Fringe Festival in 2016, and it won both the Audience Pick and the Andrew M. Dixon awards. This play is not on that level yet, but its rawness and passion are just as real. It’s a noble effort, and Ms. Abdul-Malik, producer Allen Clark, and the whole company should be justly proud.