Hope prevails in Shaw Festival's New Orleans-set play

The House That Will Not Stand is a story about escape: from the chains of slavery, both the plantation kind and the plaçage kind, overbearing mothers, and the heat of a New Orleans summer day.

Written by Marcus Gardley, who also wrote Netflix’ Maid and last year’s screen adaptation of The Color Purple, the house in question is set in New Orleans on the heels of the Louisiana Purchase. Acquired from the French, the United States set about extending racist jurisprudence in their new territory.

Plaçage, French for placer or “to place”, was a legal system where white men entered into ‘marriage’ with free women of colour, mostly because as “New Orleans was being settled, the population of white men greatly outnumbered the population of white women, and the law at the time forbade interracial marriages,” according to an essay by Bob Hetherington.

New owners meant new regulations. In this case, free coloured widows could no longer inherit property from white husbands, a dilemma for Beartrice Albans (Monica Parks), Lazare’s plaçee, who is determined to save their home for her three daughters’ legacy.

The play opens one hot Sunday in 1813 with the body of patriarch Lazare on display in the living room parlour for the traditional mourning period. Daughter Agnès (Deborah Castrilli) desires nothing more than to attend the masked ball so that she can be placed with a white man. She enlists the help of her sister, Odette (Ryann Myers) to pretend to be her mother, the only person capable of signing documents allowing plaçage.

The third sister, Maude Lynn (Rais Clarke-Mendes), escapes into a world of Jesus-as-saviour which contrasts starkly with the Voodoo practised by African slaves, in this case Makeda, richly acted by Sophia Walker.

Adding to the chaos is Beartice’s sister, Marie Josephine (Cheryl Mullings) who is often locked in the attic by the domineering Beartrice.

Makeda barters for her own freedom while the venomous La Veuve (Nehassaiu deGannes), an old enemy of Beartrice, intends to prove that Beartrice murdered Lazare.

“Your house is going to fall, Beartrice Albans. You may be the wealthiest colored woman in New Orleans, but you built this house on sand, lies and dead bodies,” seethes La Veuve.

The Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre is a small black-box space with all 265 seats looking down onto a rectangular stage no bigger than a New Orleans sitting room, yet director Philip Akin and movement director Alexis Milligan create a variety of believable scenes, sometimes at the same time.

Cue a storm, voodoo and a frenetic yet hauntingly appealing dance and the house becomes a metaphor for much more.

There is frequent walking-out-of-doors at the end of the play, but that does not mean all is lost. While The House That Will Not Stand may be a story of escape, it is also a story of hope. Maude Lynn believes that her piety will guide her future, Agnès sees herself in her younger sister, Odette, and Makeda’s transformations are life-changing. It is an important play to bring to our small town. 

The play, based on Federico Garcia Lorca’s Spanish masterpiece, The House of Bernarda Alba, last produced by Shaw in 2002 at the Court House, runs until October 12.