The Dred Scott decision, widely considered the worst ruling in the history of the United States Supreme Court, inspired “American Rot,” which should have been a better play. It certainly has a fascinating back story: The playwright, Kate Taney Billingsley, is the great-great-great-grandniece of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, who issued the ruling in 1857, which in effect denied basic human rights to all enslaved people in the United States, and helped lead to the Civil War. In the course of her research into her ancestry, Billingsley met with Lynne M. Jackson, the great-great-granddaughter of Dred Scott, who had sued for his freedom against his owners because they had moved from Missouri (a slave state) to Illinois (a state where slavery was prohibited.)
The play imagines an encounter between two fictional characters who are likewise a Taney descendant and a Scott descendant. Jim Taney (John L. Payne), a retired business executive who lives in Vermont, has invited Walter Scott (Count Stovall), a professor of Constitutional law from Virginia, to meet in a diner off the New Jersey Turnpike – an odd destination, chosen presumably because it’s half-way between Vermont and Virginia.
The meeting doesn’t go well — for either of them, nor for the audience.
The two do not meet alone. The actors lead a 14-member cast that includes the ghost of Chief Justice Taney (Timothy Doyle), and eventually of Dred Scott (Leland Gantt), as well as another historical figure, Chief Standing Bear (Francisco Solorzano), who also sued in federal court for his Constitutional rights, in his case successfully on behalf of Native Americans in an 1879 case (after the passage of the 14th amendment had overturned the Dred Scott decision.) There is also a waitress, Becki (Suzanne DiDonna), who calls herself a white nationalist, and two choruses, one black, one white. Individual members of the choruses make cameo appearances – including Jim’s daughter Alva and Walter’s daughter Ujimaa , both of whom live in Brooklyn – but they mostly speak and move in unison.
The performers are all pros, but there was a moment not halfway through “American Rot” when I started thinking this show is really aimed at schoolchildren. It was when Jim started to quote Martin Luther King’s line about “the arc of the moral universe” and all the members of the chorus traced an arc with their hands, and said in unison “It’s loooong”
For all its historical ghosts and playful theatrical antics, however , there is not enough substance in the play for it to work well as a lesson. We wind up learning little about the Dred Scott decision, or Dred Scott the person, and only one intriguing historical tidbit about Justice Roger Taney: Forty years before his racist ruling, he represented an abolitionist minister on trial for preaching an anti-slavery sermon, during which he argued “Slavery is a blot on our national character.”
For the most part, rather than relying on solid information, a thought-provoking exchange of ideas, or a building sense of drama, “American Rot” is threaded with rhetorical flourishes, mostly about the naivete and hypocrisy of Jim and white people in general, and about the continuing lack of equality and justice in America. Jim has a moment of rhetorical realization (“Roger… is in me—this—blinding—WHITE— supremacist — part— of me and I can’t escape him..”) and Walter has two stirring rhetorical monologues (“I want the truth of America’s vile history taught ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY”) But the rhetoric in the play approaches the generic, offering truths that are self-evident, at least certainly to the average theatergoer at La MaMa.
I recognized several of the actors in the cast, whom I’ve seen and admired in previous plays. One of them is Richarda Abrams. Her solo play “First By Faith: The Life Of Mary McLeod Bethune” is well-grounded in historical fact about this important African American educator, and thus more persuasive than “American Rot” in its observations about history’s ongoing legacy.
Verdict: Promising premise for exploring racist ruling’s impact, undermined by superficial script
American Rot
La MaMa through March 31
Running time: 80 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $30. Students/seniors: $25
Written by Kate Taney Billingsley
Directed by Estelle Parsons
Choreography by William Whitener, set design by Christina Weppener, lighting by Victor En Yu Tan, costume design by Molly Maginnis; and
music by Ms. Taney Billingsley, Tyler Bernhardt and Dag Markhus; lyrics by Billingsley. Sound design by Elisabeth Weidner and Samantha Palumbo.
Cast: Count Stovall as Walter Scott, John L. Payne as Jim Taney, Francisco Solorzano as Chief Standing Bear, Suzanne DiDonna as Becki, Myla Pitt, Richarda Abrams, Aprella Godfrey-Barule as Alva, DeAnna Supplee as Ujimaa Scott, Lawrence Stallings, Jason Furlani as Carey Taney, Timothy Doyle as Justice Taney, Leland Gantt as Dred Scott, Lash Dooley and Burnadair Lipscomb-Hunt.
Photographs by Steven Pisano
