"Feels like an elegant experiment, thoughtful and put-together but not quite realizing its full potential...'Confederates' creates this tension between its two parts but doesn’t do anything with it. If Morisseau has built her stories with this inherent magic of alternating settings, allowing us to time-travel with her through a discussion of racial politics then and now, why not try to allow the worlds of the two protagonists to extend a bit more? Why not go bigger?...Morisseau is a fabulous playwright, so much so that even in her plays’ flaws her brilliance still shines through. And seeing an artist try something new in her art is exciting."
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"4/5 stars...Because Morisseau is best known as the accomplished author of straightforward social dramas like 'Pipeline' and 'Skeleton Crew,' the audacious shifts of timeframe and tone in 'Confederates' come as a bit of a surprise. She pulls it off with power and finesse...Director Stori Ayers and the very fine cast of this Signature Theatre production—led by the convincing and compelling Wilson and the rigid, purposeful Lloyd—deftly handle these back-to-back back-and-forths."
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"Time bends, and we do not flinch. The play’s big-swing departures from the real, asserted so confidently, are never confusing. The little unbelievabilities, though – those do itch a little...And in a farce this serious, direction is crucial. Stori Ayers keeps her cast almost airborne — the speed is so intense that the few moments of stillness hit the audience like brick walls...Morisseau has written a comedy about Black women who are ready to burn down their institutions. She doesn’t provide any closure other than rage."
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"With its dual timelines and near allegorical characters, 'Confederates' is a departure from Morisseau's straightforwardly realistic works like 'Skeleton Crew,' which recently ran on Broadway, but it does share her talent for spot-on dialogue, and for humor that pops out of nowhere...Yet the play lacks some of the human interest that we find in Morisseau's other plays. The characters in 'Confederates' sometimes seem more like ideas than people."
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Sandra and Sara's situations don't match up. Sara faces torture and death if caught spying. (Her unexpected sexual assault on Missy Sue -- which, to be clear, is enthusiastically welcomed -- also comes with great peril.) By contrast, the web of suspicions, micro-aggressions, and political maneuvering that ensnares Sandra may be toxic, even degrading, but it is unlikely to kill her. Both characters' predicaments are unacceptable; still, the playwright's compare-and-contrast approach feels, in some fundamental way, out of balance.
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"Because the other roles are double-cast, the different stories would seem to complement each other. But do they? To apply a criticism that Sandra lodges against Malik's paper comparing the institution of slavery to Black workers in corporate America, the play 'fails to draw an effective parallel.' I spent a good deal of intellectual energy, for example, trying to understand the connections between the plantation and the American university. The play has a great deal of humor, and, indeed, the farcical elements make the trenchant message more palatable. Regrettably, this has the collateral effect of undercutting the urgency of the drama."
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"4/5 stars...Morisseau’s satisfyingly troubling play takes place in two sometimes overlapping periods...For the most part, the playwright forcibly goes to the heart of racism and its white supremacist roots. Occasionally, she interrupts her committed pursuits for laughs...Directing all scenes as surely as Morisseau wants them treated, Stori Ayers commands an excellent cast and thereby presents an excellent dramatic treatise on a never-ending American crisis."
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Dominique Morisseau’s Confederates, the second play of her Signature Theatre Residency 5, is a clever, but overly talky dissertation on race, power and family. She offers the audience parallel stories alternating between the Civil War era and modern day academia.
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