Remy Bumppo’s “Mud Row” at Theater Wit thru November 15th

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“A House Full of History: Remy Bumppo’s “Mud Row” Finds the Heart of a Family’s Inheritance” - Review By: Paul Lisnek

****/4

“A House Full of History: Remy Bumppo’s “Mud Row” Finds the Heart of a Family’s Inheritance”

The basic premise of Mud Row is that a house can be inherited, but making peace with the history of what happened inside it…well, that’s a very different matter. That distinction lies at the heart of Dominique Morisseau’s Mud Row, a powerful, emotional drama about two sisters, their struggle for survival and the things families pass down that don’t necessarily appear in a Will. It’s a compelling and captivating story.

Remy Bumppo Theatre Company’s production at Theater Wit, directed by Malkia Stampley, is a compelling production which understands that family history is often never simple. It is carried down through the arguments we have and cannot settle, challenged by the defenses we are unable to lower with people who know exactly how to hurt us. At the center of the plot are two standout performances: Ayanna Bria Bakari as Regine and Tiffany Renee Johnson as her estranged sister, Toshi. Along with a strong ensemble, they carry this show’s power.

Mud Row is potent. It shows that an argument about a house is really an argument about who suffered, who escaped, who was left behind and whose version of the family story gets preserved. Morisseau understands how quickly an ordinary exchange between siblings can become a struggle over an entire childhood. 

Set in the historically Black neighborhood of Mud Row in West Chester, Pennsylvania, the play moves scenes between two generations of sisters. In the earlier story, Elsie looks toward social advancement and the security she believes the right marriage can provide, while sister Frances is committed to the civil rights struggle. Decades later, Elsie’s granddaughter Regine inherits the family house, bringing her to reckon with her sister Toshi and the past they share. The property connects the stories, but the conflict runs deep with a complicated mixture of pain, failure, hope, pride and love.

Morisseau’s great strength is her refusal to reduce these women to stereotypes. They live contradictions personally and also raise questions about class and family obligations.

Bakari’s Regine is compelling, intelligent, guarded and deeply vulnerable. There is strength in her portrayal but also a sense of an exhausting effort to maintain it. She is someone internally negotiating what success has—and has not—allowed her to escape in her life.

Johnson is equally impressive as Toshi, bringing spark, humor and urgency to a woman who will not be dismissed as she lives her changed self. Johnson makes Toshi a person whose defiance and intelligence, will not let her be pushed aside. She’s rough around the edges but her need for connection, or re-connection, must, if with difficulty, be expressed. Bakari and Johnson are the production’s emotional center; they are sisters who carry and live competing accounts of a shared past that boils over in the home of their upbringing. 

The strength of Remy Bumppo’s Mud Row extends throughout its ensemble, with each performer contributing to the production’s rich sense of family, history and belonging. Alexis Janae and Toccara Castleman bring conviction and humanity to ancestor sisters Elsie and Frances, making their differing ambitions feel deeply persona, not just symbolic. As Ragine’s husband Davin and Toshi’s partner Tyriek, Jamaque Thomas and Jabari Khaliq provide valuable emotional counterpoints to the sisters’ conflict, giving the relationships grounding and warmth. Taken together, the cast creates a compelling portrait of people bound together by love, but deeply wounded by experience and with an ongoing struggle to understand and perhaps forgive one another.

For all its painful territory, Mud Row is not a drama of unrelieved suffering. In fact, it would be fascinating to see the next chapter at Christmas family dinner. It may just have you walking out thinking about your own family history and whether the struggles can be resolved or live on in generations to come.

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Mud Row continues through November 15 in Theater One at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave in Chicago. Tickets at; www.RemyBumppo.org