Review: A DNA Test Throws an American Family Into Turmoil in Redwood

It’s relatively common to hear people talking about the results of their DNA tests and how they’ve discovered some tidbit of genetic history that they weren’t aware of. For some, learning the percentages of their genealogical makeup is at most a fun diversion. But what if you were to dig deeper and discover details about your ancestors that you might rather not know?

That’s one of the questions at the heart of Brittany K. Allen’s brilliant and hilarious new comedy Redwood, now running at Ensemble Studio Theatre. It’s a question that Allen, who also stars in the play, makes even more challenging when she puts it in the context of America’s legacy of slavery and its continuing impact on the race relations (and interracial relationships) of today. With an astute ear for language and a keen awareness of perspectives of folks from different backgrounds, Allen has done a remarkable job of furthering our ongoing conversation about race in a tightly plotted play that provokes serious conversation even as it makes us laugh out loud.

Redwood begins with middle-aged Uncle Steve (Tyrone Mitchell Henderson in a wonderful comedic performance) trying to get his relatives interested in family history by encouraging them to get DNA tests. His twin sister, Beverly (Portia), is not interested, knowing enough already about their great-great-great-great-grandmother, an enslaved woman named Alameda (played in flashbacks by Bryn Carter). Determined to find out more about his family tree anyway, Steve discovers a white sharecropper named Tatum (Denny Dale Bess) in his family tree and decides to contact another of Tatum’s descendants — distant white cousin Drew (Drew Lewis), who is appalled to learn of his family’s participation in slavery. To Steve’s disappointment, the fragile, otherwise knowledge-loving Drew refuses to help him with his family tree. But things suddenly get complicated when Drew makes a thoughtless comment that leads the two of them to realize that Drew’s girlfriend, Meg (played by Allen), is related not only to Steve but to Drew as well.

It’s a brilliant setup, and it’s also no small feat that, given the play’s emotionally charged references to slavery, Allen has created a funny play about how we do and don’t confront the worst parts of our history and ourselves. Director Mikhaela Mahony masterfully balances those serious themes while drawing complex, humorous performances from the cast (Mika Eubanks’s costumes are a veritable spectrum of bright colors that keep the mood buoyant). Allen wonderfully portrays the conflicted Meg, an ambitious teacher who never looked at the racial dynamics of being in a relationship with a white man until she learns about her background, and then questions whether such a relationship is possible at all.

Portia convincingly shows us a different conflict in Meg’s mother, who challenges her daughter about the usefulness of dredging up the past, especially if it prevents people from moving on with their lives today. And Lewis does an exemplary job of showing us a well-meaning white guy who can’t stop saying the wrong things and whose pitiful, sad-sack reactions often seem more performative than genuine. Completing the cast are the hilarious Kate Siahaan-Rigg as Drew’s stepmother and Eric R. Williams as a blunt yoga instructor.

Ao Li’s versatile set of movable tables and benches keeps the action moving smoothly between scenes along with Betsy Chester and Stacey Derosier’s unobtrusive lighting. Williams often fills in those between-scene pauses by performing Sasha Hutchings’s light-hearted choreography accompanied by a host of songs (chosen by the cast) pumped into the air by sound designer Kathy Ruvuna. More often than not, Redwood feels like a celebration.

And it is — to a point. While the play pokes fun at its characters as they fumble for the vocabulary to talk about the unspeakable, Allen also embraces somber moments to reflect on those who came before, who were brutally enslaved, and who suffered immeasurable pain and indignity. These scenes are among the play’s most challenging and sobering as the ghosts of the past come to render their judgment on the living. With its four unforgettable final words, Redwood (the play is named for one of America’s oldest, tallest, most resilient conifers) dares us to listen to the past and come to terms with our nation’s own fraught family tree.