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Family affair: (l-r) Cathy Simpson, Peter DeLaurier,

Larry Grant Malvern, Roslyn Ruff, Mary Elizabeth

Scallen and Robert Beatty in <i>In the Blood</i>.

Family affair: (l-r) Cathy Simpson, Peter DeLaurier, Larry Grant Malvern, Roslyn Ruff, Mary Elizabeth Scallen and Robert Beatty in In the Blood.

A unique twist on an American classic at People's Light.

by Toby Zinman

The Chorus begins the play clustered together in the dark, spitting out contempt, spitting out blame and, literally, spitting: "Shiftless/Hopeless/Bad News/Burden to Society/ Hussy/Slut. Something's gotta be done to stop this sort of thing."

"This sort of thing" is Hester's life: unmarried mother of five children, all by different fathers, illiterate, starving, living in a shack under a bridge. The Chorus ends their prologue to the play with, "It won't end well for her." We are thus warned: In the Blood, by Suzan-Lori Parks, is an American tragedy, structured with classical elegance (the ancient device of the chorus, all the dialogue in language rhythmic enough to be poetry while streetwise enough to be a transcription). Every point of view is presented in gorgeous spotlit monologues: the social worker, the street doctor, the corner evangelist, the hooker. In Act I we dislike everybody; in Act II our hearts break for them all. And for ourselves. What a terrible world we've allowed to come into being. Or maybe it was always there: the doom, "in the blood" that some people live under, the "hand of fate" that blocks out the sun. If that doom is race and poverty, the calamity is contemporary society.

Although the great Greek tragedies seem to be lurking under the surface of this extraordinary play, the direct literary reference is to Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous 19th-century novel, The Scarlet Letter, whose Hester Prynne is also an unwed mother, also harshly driven to the margins of the human community. The letter is "A," which, in colonial Massachusetts stands for Adultery, here is the only letter Parks' Hester has learned.

As an iconic American story of communal guilt, sanctimonious self-righteousness, hardheartedness and the victimization of women, The Scarlet Letter lays the groundwork for this play (although the similarities are not always convincing). Parks is clearly obsessed with American icons: Her newest play, opening this spring in New York, is called Fucking A and revisits Hawthorne's book. Her Topdog/Underdog, which just won the Pulitzer, contains the figure of a black man playing Abraham Lincoln in whiteface -- a figure which has appeared in her earlier plays as well. Parks has a lot to say, and it is remarkable that she has avoided melodrama and sociological cliche as she says it with such dramatic force.

It is one thing to produce this play in 1999 at the Public Theater in downtown New York City, where such misery plays out every day on the streets nearby. The Public's audience -- ultra-urban and theatrically sophisticated -- is a far cry from the gentrified, suburban world of Malvern. It is immensely courageous of Abigail Adams, People's Light & Theatre's artistic director, to include In the Blood -- complete with on-stage oral sex and shocking slang -- in her season of great American plays. And it is testimony to both the power of the play and to this superb production, that a generally geriatric audience on a Sunday afternoon was on its feet applauding at the conclusion.

The cast is uniformly fine: Roslyn Ruff, a newcomer to the Philadelphia scene, provides an impassioned range of emotions, combining gritty realism with classical elegance. The rest of the cast is doubled: Robert Beatty plays both the hulking and sweet 13-year-old son and his wonderfully weird father who was Hester's first lover; Peter DeLaurier is fierce and scruffy as a younger son and bizarrely funny as the well-meaning physician; Larry Grant Malvern plays both the baby and the riveting, fast-talking Reverend who is Baby's father; Mary Elizabeth Scallen is both a timid daughter and Hester's opportunistic sexy friend, Amiga; Cathy Simpson is a knockout as both the exploitative, smug social worker and the tough kid, Bully, whose hands clench into fists in her sleep.

It all takes place in a set designed by Lewis Folden (a far cry from the usual PL&T sets of ornate drawing rooms) and lit by Dennis Parichy, who balances grim realistic dimness with brilliant theatrical spotlights.

In the Blood, through Feb. 9, People's Light & Theatre Co., 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, 610-647-1900