It has been my experience that when someone on the production staff places a written explanation of how a show came to be in the program, it is because they think the show needs explaining.  Not a good sign.  It reminds me of the time I handed in a paper in grammar school and told my teacher “I worked really hard on this.”  Her reply was, “I don’t care how hard you worked.  I expect you to work hard every time.  I care about the result.”

Such is the case with Lost On The Natchez Trace, the result of a four year collaboration, but which, despite the hard work and good intentions, comes up short.

The idea for this play is an excellent one.  Malcolm Jeters (Peter Brouwer), a slave auctioneer, gets lost in a storm on his way from one auction to another.  He loses his mule and suffers injury to his leg.  The only help available is a runaway slave who, days before, was separated from his wife Mary and their baby and sold by this very same auctioneer.  Tom (Leopold Lowe) will help Jeters on the condition that Jeters tells Tom where Mary is.  Stakes are life and death – nothing better than that in the theatre. 

At first Jeters denies any knowledge of the slave auction, saying that he has never auction human flesh.  And this is where the play, like Jeters mule, steps in quicksand and is pulled under.  The argument between these two men stalls flat and remains mired for the majority of the play.  Urgency is sacrificed for reminiscences that tell us about the times and what led these men to this moment.  We hear about how Jeters became an auctioneer, his love for his father and his family.  We hear about Tom’s life with Mary who he loved since he was a baby.  Tom even goes so far as to conduct a mock auction to see if he can sell Jeters to God, while Jeters keeps upping the promise of a reward to Tom for rescuing him: money, land and freedom.

It is not until the play’s near conclusion that we are brought up short.  We see the auction as it played out the day that Tom was sold and Mary’s fate was sealed.  It is a horrid and moving scene, beautifully realized by these two actors, that leads us to a place we would rather not go.  But it is the only moment in the play that lives up to the author’s intention, and one scene does not a play make.

The dearth of theatre that addresses slavery and its indelible stain is a sad state of affairs, as is the nearly complete absence of theatre about any race other than us lily-whites. So this play’s possibilities and promise were welcome on many levels.  But the result is profoundly lacking. What the collaborators had was a fine idea.  What they never discovered was the structure necessary to hold their story together long enough for it to stand on its own. 

The tale got lost in a maze of good intentions.

LOST ON THE NATCHEZ TRACE – by Jan Buttram, Directed by Kate Bushman

WITH Peter Brouwer (Malcolm Jeters) and Leopold Lowe (Tom)

Set design Andrew Lu, lighting design Travis Hale, Costum design Sidney Levitt and Catherine Siracusa, sound design David Magolin Lawson

ABINGDON THEATRE COMPANY’s Lost On The Natchez Trace runs February 3-26: Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7pm; Friday and Saturdays at 8pm; with 2pm matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $25. For tickets and more information about Abingdon Theatre Company (312 West 36th Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues), call 212-868-2055 or visit www.abingdontheatre.org.