| Written by Ian Allen Directed by Joe Lane September 19 - October 11, 1998 D.C. Arts Center For info regarding rights to "Savage Pieta," please visit our "Script Service" page. |  Momma (Teresa Flynn, left) and Beula (HeatherMorris, right) have a disagreement. Photo by Manuela Lea Palmiola, 1998 |
The show's original title, Nigger Pieta, was changed at the suggestion of DCAC's house manager, Mike Kelley. This was in order to avoid "overdoing it." At the time, we were all a bit afraid of getting strung up in this backwater fucking town. Mike Kelley has admitted that he made a horrible, horrible mistake. And Cherry Red has since changed its policy toward "overdoing it."
Savage Pieta was our first shw to be reviewed by The Washington Post. And what a review it was! Possibly the only person who hated it more was Nelson Pressley (then at the Washington Times). Both reviews are below for your sadistic reading pleasure. They, together, constitute a lovely exercize in: How to call Ian Allen a pussy in 100 words or less.
But the production was tons of fun, and it still has a small but frightenly-zealous core of fans who remember it well. Sadly though, it was our biggest flop to date. And would still hold the title, if not for The Erpingham Camp (our Titanic) two years later.
On an even sadder note, the life-sized "pickaninny" doll used in the show, was drunkenly abandoned in an alley on closing night. "Sweetie, if you're out there, we'd love to hear from you. Hope you found a good home."
The Washington Times
by Nelson Pressley
September 1997
Playwright Ian Allen wants to be shocking, but he's not very good at it.
The outrage he tries to perpetrate in Savage Pieta at the D.C. Arts Center is this: A young couple in the antebellum Soluth receive as a wedding gift a young black boy.
Before the audience can gasp in horror, the sound design (by Howard Stregack) does it for them. It's a mocking gesture; mocking is what Mr. Allen does best.
But how interesting is it to see a racist woman and her redneck son spew familiar attitudes for an hour? The ugly joke is over in five minutes; after that, the cartoon characters don't develop or do anything unpredictable, and the play has no insights (unless "Racism is bad" is news to you).
There's no accusing Mr. Allen of being trashy; it's what he wants to be. But it takes a bit of style and wit (think John Waters) to make trash work. All Mr. Allen seems to have going for him so far is nerve (the title of his next project is unprintable in a family newspaper) and wide-ranging disgust.
The Washington Post
by William Triplett
September 25, 1997
Hey, you. Cherry Red Productions wants to throw its latest effort, Ian Allen's Savage Pieta, in your face. Don't worry, though. You'll be very safe.
The play, which opened last weekend in D.C. Arts Center's black box, is meant as a satiric attack on political correctnes; in particular, PC's insistence on not offending anyone. The author believes this has formed a barrier to discussing complicated, emotionally charged social ills, and so the time has come, Allen thinks, to smash the barrier -- with an outrageous tale he hopes will provoke people. At least that's what Cherry Red's promotional material says.
Too bad the script achieves the exact opposite.
The problem lies with the author's penchant for the extreme. Momma (Theresa Flynn), a denizen of pre-Civil War South, decides to give her future daughter-in-law, Lila (Andrea Templeton), a personal slave as a wedding present. Polite blond Yankee idiot that she is, Lila doesn't want to offend Momma by refusing to accept the black child (represented by an oversize doll).
Besides, Bo (Joe Wildermuth), her intended, just thinks it's so sweet that Momma has given her her very own slave. Lila's father (Keith M. Donaldson), a sensitive New Yorker who protests such humanity, ends up shotgunned by Momma for interfering. Nothing that happens onstage remotely resembles racism, either in spirit or fact. What Savage Pieta slings at us are vicious cartoons, easily dodged and therefore dismissed. A cliche can work if the emotional truth ossified at its core can, however briefly, be reanimated to make us feel that its truth implicates us. Instead, Allen's play and Joe Lane's direction constantly reassure us that racism is a broad farce practiced by seething bigots who don't look or act anything like us.
Templeton and Wildermuth, particularly the latter, try to bring more complexity to their roles than the author has given them. They don't quite succeed, but their valiant effort is admirable. The rest of the cast is weighed down by the stereotyping, except for flynn, who seems to delight in it, as her shrill characterization would suggest.
Howard Stregack's clever sound and wickedly funny music along with Catherine Aselford's wonderfully detailed costumes are the highlight of the evening: They're the only things that provoke a response in the audience other than superiority.
