"History and folklore can certainly find compatibility onstage, but 'This Land Was Made' is still roaming and rambling in search of the right alchemy."
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"Sampson has fashioned a provocative speculative drama, combining fictional characters with historical figures to capture the temper of a city ready to explode with racial tensions and revolutionary fervor."
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“The truth may be elusive in ‘This Land Was Made,’ but there are flashes of brilliance in the delivery. And that may be enough to make one sit up and listen.”
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In its earliest scenes--as a Marvin Gaye record spins on the turntable, Adam Honoré's lighting design pairs naturalistically with Wilson Chin's meticulous set, and Dominique Fawn Hill and DeShon Elem's beautifully redolent costumes delight our eyes with vibrant patterns--"This Land Was Made" achieves an authenticity that makes you want to sit at the bar and order some lunch, too. Ironically, it's when Newton (Julian Elijah Martinez) and his comrade Gene (Curtis Morlaye) enter the story that the play's verisimilitude begins to come undone. Abandoning realism for audacious dramatic license, "This Land Was Made" turns into an intellectual showdown between Newton and Troy, with the latter becoming entangled in the fatal incident that led to Newton's imprisonment.
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This Land Was Made—a title lifted from Woody Guthrie, perhaps as an ironic commentary on who exactly it was made for—has its heart in the right place but, apart from giving some of Huey Newton’s thoughts a platform, leaves much to be desired.
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"...it’s about a family and a neighborhood and the people doing the living and dying...this story illustrates that truth as great events play out on the everyday people in her play."
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Playwright Tori Sampson richly delineates her appealing characters, the dialogue is eloquently earthy, plot threads are compelling, and a sense of history is ever present. Ms. Sampson offers an imaginary scenario where Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton is a central character, and his 1967 confrontation with law enforcement where a police officer was killed, is searingly depicted during her absorbing Oakland bar-set memory play.
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“Tori Sampson’s ‘This Land Was Made’ is a steamy gumbo of history, humor, and imagination...Sampson’s play, though it has some shortfalls, manages to show that, regardless of one’s skin color, much is to be learned from these forerunners of today’s Black Power movement.”
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