Elaina Vance’s Last Dance

A caustic dramedy by Stacy Presha, and directed by Carmen Matthis, Elaina Vance’s Last Dance is set in the 1970s, touching on the rarely breached connection between mobsters and working class African-Americans in Harlem and White Plains. Sensing that the long-ago disappearance of her beloved son was caused by her second (and present) abusive and alcoholic husband, flamboyant matriarch Elaina Vance gleefully announces that he is very ill, to her granddaughter Jade’s despair. Jade has dealt with her father’s seeming abandonment by becoming a practical-minded social worker who worries in a tolerant way about the crazy and criminal antics of her grandmother. The underlying violence of Elaina’s illegal activities culminates in a particularly frenetic afternoon of card-playing with two old friends who are also involved in the underworld.