Formidable Black Women Lead an Epic Theatrical Saga in ‘A Thousand Ships’

Walking into Oakland Theater Project’s A Thousand Ships is like walking into an Oakland neighborhood hair salon just before business hours. Quite literally, in fact. The intimate set — designed by Randy Wong-Westbrooke and sumptuously lit by Dr. Stephanie Anne Johnson — encloses the assembled audience within the salon’s interior. Leatherette-covered swivel chairs extend into the seating arrangements. An assortment of framed photographs of notable Black women adorn the walls, spiraling around a small sandpit in the center of the room. This sandpit grounds the action from scene to scene — from 1944 to 2008 — from the banks of a baptismal river to the last car of a West-bound train.

This ever-present sand shifting beneath the feet of the actors provides a tangible symbol for so many of the play’s fleeting themes. Of arrival and departure. Of baptism and beauty. Of being cast upon a foreign shore and made to work the land. Of the longing to reclaim a piece of land lost for oneself.

There must have been a moment during the development of Marcus Gardley’s script for A Thousand Ships when its current storyline emerged — as it’s quite a departure from the original concept that garnered it a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission (in association with Cal Shakes) in 2017. That production promised to revisit the Richmond shipyards during World War II through oral history and vernacular music, a concept Gardley explored in This World in a Woman’s Hands, produced by Shotgun Players in 2009. But while there’s a single scene in the play that does take place in the shipyards (with choreography by Latanya d. Tigner and music by longtime Gardley collaborator Molly Holm), this play is mainly centered around an Oakland salon on the brink of foreclosure — and the decades-long friendship between its co-owners.

Gardley’s work frequently blurs the lines between the earthly and the epic, and threads of the metaphysical are woven throughout this piece. At the top, Adrian Roberts as the Father of Water delivers a stately, poetic monologue ruminating on the nature of water and the cycles of history. The play’s matriarchs bestow blessings upon their kin that simultaneously reach into the past for inspiration yet call on an unwritten future. Like mythic ancestors, the two protagonists — Adeline Merritt Lake (Halili Knox), and Laney Melrose Durant (Dawn L. Troupe) — represent so much of Oakland even in their names alone. They’re everywomen who are both enchantingly 100% themselves, but also the culmination of those who came before them and those yet to be.

Knox and Troupe are equally charismatic, and their respective performances complement each other’s strengths (even if neither quite pulls off a convincing octogenarian). But it might be Rolanda D. Bell who really steals the show as neighborhood gossip and unapologetic Republican, “First Lady” Bella Vista Montclair. From the instant she enters the room shaking a miniature tambourine, she grabs hold of our attention and does not let it go. Wonderfully worldly — yet deeply concerned with the matters of the spirit — Bell’s First Lady encompasses multitudes, and leaves an indelible impression.

Somewhat less impactful, the play’s younger generation feel less fully realized as characters and more like filler foils for their storied elders. Two are Laney’s grown children — played by Sam Jackson and William Heartfield — and the third is First Lady’s personal assistant Dimond, played humorously by Jasmine Milan Williams, who exaggerates her character’s advancing pregnancy with much huffing and mincing.

There’s a disappointingly tepid embezzlement plot point that doesn’t really amp up the tension, and results in an even more lukewarm conflict between Jackson’s Laurel Durant Bancroft and Heartfield’s MacArthur Bancroft. It’s almost impossible to really root for either of them as written, although Jackson at least is given a transformative moment of music that hints at the emotional depths her character struggles to otherwise reveal.

It should be noted that despite the Dec. 15 show being originally billed as opening night, Oakland Theater Project made a last minute decision to extend their previews — but to still let press review that preview. So it’s to be expected that evident lags in momentum and memorization will be ironed out by their new official opening night, on Dec. 19. Director Michael Socrates Moran has been bringing Gardley’s work to life for ten years now, and has a keen ear for the distinctive rhythms of his work.

What will likely not be addressed for this run is the puzzling disconnect between the play’s elders and their heirs, who stand to inherit their legacy, but who feel ill-suited to bear that weight. I’d love to see Gardley revisit these characters again when they’re better prepared to step into their own power, and shape a narrative of their own. With ancestors as magnificent as Adeline and Laney, they’ll have a solid foundation to build from, and plenty of forward momentum.

‘A Thousand Ships’ runs at Oakland Theater Project through Jan. 5.