I posted by thoughts on a different message board. Copying and pasting here:
Jo Bonney's new production of Suzan-Lori Parks's F*CKing A makes a stronger case for the play than the play itself. Parks's 2003 play -- a very loose riff on The Scarlet Letter, now revived by Signature Theatre -- has interesting things to say about parental devotion, the roles afforded to women in repressive societies, the struggles faced by the poor, and the necessity of "evil" work. Yet it's too often weighted down by pseudo-Brechtian devices, including an over-reliance on unmemorable character songs that impede the drama's flow. Despite this, Bonney's fluid, visually striking and largely well-cast production accentuates what works about the play, promoting the right balance of beauty and horror. (Rachel Hauck's stark unit set and Jeff Croiter's often chilling lighting design complement this well.) Christine Lahti's powerful, scrubbed-down performance anchors the production, which also includes a lot of fine work from an able supporting cast -- of which Joaquina Kalukango is a standout. One performance at the early preview I saw was not quite there yet, but probably will get there with time. Recommended.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
