San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Two centuries of colonization in ‘Manahatta’
The past isn’t past at all in Mary Kathryn Nagle’s “Manahatta.” “Indeed,” she writes in a note at the top of her script, the past and present “are one and the same.”
The show, whose 2018 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production is streaming as part of the theater’s digital and inperson season, takes place in both the 17th and 21st centuries.
Jane (Tanis Parenteau) is a supersmart mathematician about to start a highpowered finance job in Manhattan. But back in Oklahoma, her Lenape family is struggling. Her father just died. Her mother, Bobbie (Sheila Tousey), doesn’t want to be left alone. Jane’s sister, Debra (Rainbow Dickerson), resents shouldering the filial burden.
Centuries of colonization write the tensions of Jane’s life: the way she’s assailed to give more and more in her job interview mirrors the way a character in the past says, “There’s no such thing as enough in the New World.”
“Manahatta”: Available to stream through April 24. $15. 800-219-8161. www.osfashland. org