THE CONSEQUENCES OF GREED:
MANAHATTA IN MANHATTAN
Before getting into the play, it is important to know that Manahatta is written by playwright, activist and attorney Mary Kathryn Nagle, who chose to follow the Native American tradition of storytelling, a very specific approach to dramaturgy. This oral tradition connects the past with the present becoming a source of historical knowledge where old tales, morals, and spirituality are entangled. I mention it in case you are looking for modern Western drama: Manahatta is something else.
Rainbow Dickerson, Sheila Tousey, Jeffrey King, David Kelly, Joe Tapper
It’s 2008 and Jane Snake (Elizabeth Frances), an ambitious Stanford graduate, gets her dream job in New York City at Lehman Brothers working for an annoying banker (Joe Tapper) who has an even more obnoxious boss, Dick (Jeffrey King). Jane is part of the Lenape People, a Native American tribe that was brutally forced to move from the East Coast by the European colonizers. Oklahoma is Jane Snake’s birth place and where her proud mother (Sheila Tousey) and sister Debra (Rainbow Dickerson) have been living all their lives, in poverty, holding as much as possible to their Lenape traditions.
Elizabeth Frances and Joe Tapper
Jane is literally moving to her ancestral home since the Lenape inhabited Manhattan Island, Manhatta, for more than 10,000 years. We even get to see her ancestors in the 1600s because the play alternates past and present in the same minimalistic set crafted by Marcelo Martínez García. The table is the center piece and everything happens either on it or around it; movement director Ty Defoe used it as often as possible to give the actors a better way to tell their stories with their bodies.
Enrico Nassi and Elizabeth Frances
In the 1600s, we see the Lenape selling fur on the “Broad Way”, living a simple life, welcoming the Dutch traders, signing contracts in good faith while completely ignoring the concepts of land ownership or wild greed. We know what happens next. In modern times, if Jane wants a career at Lehman’s, she has to join her bosses’ rapacious party, selling bogus mortgages, bankrupting and displacing innocent people. The graft fails, the financial market crashes, and Jane finds herself right in the middle of the storm. Among the victims, her proud mother (Tousey) who secretly mortgaged their Oklahoma home to pay for her husband’s medical bills.
Enrico Nassi and David Kelly
The whole play is about greed destroying everything in its unstoppable march, then and now. Director Laurie Woolery stayed true to Native storytelling by portraying characters like fixed masks and the actors have similar roles in the past and present. Frances’s exuberance both as Jane and Le-le-wa’-you is engaging; she is brilliant and determined in her jobs in both centuries, selling furs in one and stocks in the other, completely blind to what surrounds her. Tapper succeeds in being the irritating middle-man as Jakob, the Dutch fur trader, and Joe, the stock trader. He shows a touch of humanity in both with almost no results for the overall story, functioning more like a bridge between good and evil. King plays the epitome of the villain as Peter Minuit and the modern Lehman’s boss; he is as boisterous and abhorrent as the Jing in Chinese Opera.
Elizabeth Frances and Rainbow Dickerson
Tousey’s delivery is blunt, mostly laconic, and often hilarious as Jane’s mother. As an older Lenape woman, she holds the wisdom, the courage, the power of her ancestors; Tousey is perfect in both roles. The use of the Lenape language is well distributed throughout the play, adding a musical touch to the dialogues, especially hers. Dickerson, who plays her other daughter, is excellent as Jane’s alter ego, the frustrated sister who stayed home to take care of the family. Enrico Nassi, who plays Luke in the present and Se-ket-tu-may-qua in the past, is also ideal as Jane’s special friend. Lux Haac’s costumes help all the actors switching back and forth between roles because they are unique to each particular character while staying as minimalistic as the set, a difficult task considering the plot.
Jeffrey King, Elizabeth Frances, and Joe Tapper
Despite its simplicity, it is refreshing to see a play about Native Americans written by a Native American, performed on the original homeland of the Lenape People.
Jeffrey King
photos by Joan Marcus
Manahatta
The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street
ends on December 23, 2023
Tues-Sun at 7:30; Sat & Sun at 1:30
for tickets, call 212.967.7555 or visit The Public
Sheila Tousey
