HOW KATRINA PLAYS at WriteAct Repertory

It's very difficult to write a play. It's exceedingly difficult to write a good play. It's even more difficult than that to write a good play based on actual events, because the writer should stick to the reality of what made the story compelling to begin with, but the writer also needs to create a piece of theater that will entertain, as well as -- with any luck -- inform.

In the case of "How Katrina Plays" by Judi Ann Mason -- a mosaic of vignettes about the disaster in New Orleans after the landfall of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 -- what you have is none of the above.

The play was developed from the postings of Ms. Mason's brother, B.J. Mason, during the whole debacle. B.J. was a journalist and activist in Louisiana and wanted to let the world know about what the hell was going on down there as the American government's non-response shocked the world. So he collected every story he heard and emailed them to everyone he knew. It seems that in the process of doing this very noble work, B.J. had a heart attack while sitting at his desk. So, to celebrate his life and work, and I guess to remind the theatre world of the tragedy, Judi Ann Mason (an LA -based writer, herself, who has now also passed, sadly) put together a number of these pieces of her brother's and assembled them into something intended to pass as drama.

I have spent too much of my life on this show, already (two-and-a-half-plus eternal hours, thank you), that I really don't want to waste even more of my time pointing out every single problem with this production. Because there is a LIST.

But, in brief and in no order of grievousness: the pace was slow; the directing was "concept"-based, and not actors'-performance-based (read: lots of shouting, empty emoting and other masturbation); and the writing was awful. To be fair, it was awful in a few ways. It was terribly repetitive, for starters. There were times I actually thought the actors had gotten lost and improvised their way back around to the top of the scene...only it just kept happening! (A sample I am paraphrasing only slightly: a character is on her way out of New Orleans to move to Philadelphia, about which she says "I am never going back to New Orleans again! Never! Never, ever, ever! No, not ever! Not ever, ever, ever, ever! Not going back there ever! Not ever!" and so on. Now imagine this kind of writing over several scenes, with people not only saying the same thing over and over, but ideas getting covered over and over again, and never in a new way). Next up: many of her characters were in situations that made no logical sense; for example, the kid and mom who got separated and couldn't find each other (in one of the few arcing stories of the night, making the dialog both repetitive AND redundant) got in their predicament because the mother had sent her son out for milk...even though the town had already started evacuating two days before and there was a hurricane outside. (The only possible explanation was if the mother was supposed to be so strung out she didn't know the difference -- but if that's the case, then that, too, was a failing of the writer and director.) Another questionable story revolved around a couple who was spending their wedding night in their attic...meaning we're to believe that anyone would actually marry them during an evacuation, rather than put it off a few days.

But the worst of the many grievances I have against this production is the simple fact that clearly NO ONE did anything resembling fact-checking, as there any number of glaring errors. So many that my partner in theater-going (a New Orleans native) was furious by the end of the evening. Again, I won't list them all, but here are a few: the name of the bridge over the Mississippi that people unsuccessfully used to try and escape to the next parish was wrong. Yes -- people at the far end did point rifles at the fleeing crowd to keep them from crossing over, but they were not wearing KKK hoods, as this show insisted. One woman refers to where she lives as "on the hill", while Southern Louisiana is completely, utterly flat -- so flat that they built a hill at the New Orleans Zoo for the kids to see what a hill looks like!

On and on the mistakes rolled, making a mockery of both B.J. Mason and the memory of the horror Hurricane Katrina created and the deadly incompetence its response exposed.

This is a subject very much in need of a great play. With its sub-standard directing and acting (although there were a few stand-outs who clearly did their homework), bland-at-best writing, smug air of significance, and lack of both logic and correct information, "How Katrina Plays" isn't it. Not by a long shot.

Til next time!
--HDSQ, Jr.