“Eve’s Song” takes you to the ancestors and shares the struggles that Black women face. Playwright Patricia Ione Lloyd paints a picture that states that the first woman in existence was a Black woman named Eve and that is who all Black women descend from. She creates a world in which every Black woman has her own song, and when you die you get to hear your personal song when the ancestors come to take your soul to the next existence.
Lloyd so beautifully shows all the complex sides that a Black woman has. There’s the caring mother side, the frustrated woman side, the mother who questions if she is doing the right thing by her children, the mother who is concerned that there are negative elements in the world that she can’t protect her children from and the mother who has to pretend that everything is good, everything is just great, to try and maintain a “happy” family home life.
Lloyd paints a picture that shows how a mother feels while dealing with the fresh wounds of her husband walking out and leaving her alone to raise their two children. We see a woman who has a high position at work but, as the Black executive, is degraded. We see a woman who knows firsthand what being sexually harassed at work looks like. Lloyd gives the audience a proud Black woman, who bends over backward to try to have everything go well.
When you meet Deborah and her two children—19-year-old Lauren, a college student, and teenage son Mark—you see them as a well-mannered, polite family that sits down to eat dinner together, flip their napkins onto their laps and politely pass each other the food across the table. Their routine is to ask each other about their day to demonstrate that they care. Deborah is a well-educated woman who prides herself on teaching her children how to carry themselves in a proper manner. She is also dealing with the fact that her daughter has recently come out as a lesbian.
There are symbolic signs: a crack in the back wall of the dining area increases in size as devastating things happen to Black men and women in the world. Mark is a sensitive young man who Deborah is trying to shield from the violence of the outside world. As he watches the news to hear reports of Black men being murdered, her inclination is to turn the television off, as if by doing so would render these murders unreal. Mark, hungry for news on what’s happening to Black men in the world around him, secretly starts to get the news through his phone and through the computer.
Lloyd truly is bothered by the murders of Black men and women in society, as we all should be. The spirits of three Black women, who were real and killed in real life, speak of the situations that viciously took their lives, and it left the audience stunned.
In showing the many sides of Black women, Lloyd also gives us a character that has strength and who is willing to lead protest marches against the oppression of Black people and against the injustices thrust upon Black people—a character named Upendo, who also becomes Lauren’s 21-year old lover.
Lloyd provides a look at love from the perspective of a lesbian, a look that is filled with passion and desire. As serious as the subject matter of this play is, it is balanced at times with humor. The relevance, power, passion and heart of Lloyd’s play is a vivid demonstration of why she is the Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence.
The performance of this cast will simply take your breath away. This stupendous cast includes De’Adre Aziza as Deborah, Kadijah Raquel as Lauren, Karl Green as Mark, Ashley D. Kelley as Upendo and as the three characters called Spirit Women—Vernice Miller, Rachel Watson-Jih and Tamara M. Williams. Riveting direction by Jo Bonney adds to the brilliance of this piece. For tickets, call 212-539-8900 or visit www.publictheater.org.