REVIEW: Mud Row, with Remy Bumppo Theatre Company.

It's incredibly tempting to see a play that asks interesting questions and tackles thorny, complicated material and immediately equate that with the play being Good. Sadly, themes and questions can only carry you so far, and Dominique Morisseau's multigenerational Mud Row, now being staged at Theater Wit by Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, consistently falters in delivering an experience worth the weight of its ideas. Yes, there's a fascinating plot about two sisters fighting over an abandoned home that carries the tension of an entire family's legacy, and yes, there are intriguing conversations regarding class struggle and intra-communal tension and Civil Rights Era-violence and familial grief. But the production almost makes it feel like this preponderance of worthwhile topics in and of themselves can immediately sand over issues of pacing and design and tone. If only making art were that easy!

I've typically been a fan of Dominique Morisseau's work (Blood at the Root and Paradise Blue were both tremendous experiences when I saw those respective productions here years ago), but her writing in Mud Row feels repetitive and pandering to the point of obliviousness. Her dialogue scenes here wander in pointless circles, and her characters can't help but consistently yell out the themes of the play at every possible turn. As two sister characters kept finding new ways in every single scene of theirs to reiterate "you're like this, but I'm like this," I almost couldn't help but laugh at how little trust Morisseau has in the audience to be able to hang on to her characters without constantly reminding us in such literal terms how they move through the world.

The inconsistency in playwriting craft sadly seemed to carry over to the production side too; I knew things were off to a rocky start when the two aforementioned sisters, Elsie (Alexis Jane) and Frances (Toccara Castleman), were initially introduced in the play, their respective entrances accented with lights and sounds seemingly meant to evoke a flashbulb from a camera. In practice, the effect is awkward and stilted and comes off more like a flourish one might see in an anime. We get the same flourish whenever the two characters hug, and at that point, I was half expecting a voiceover to pipe in yelling "LOOK AT THIS. THIS IS IMPORTANT."

Moments like this made me concerned that director Malkia Stampley seemed to lack any trust in the audience, with Christopher Kriz's score similarly being used to lampshade emotional moments just in case we didn't understand the stakes of a particular scene. Bizarre, as this is a fairly legible piece of writing, its themes and narrative and plot points pretty easy to track (a particular twist revelation at the end of Act 1 involving the identity of a particular character is so incredibly obvious, I was shocked at the number of gasps it elicited from my crowd). In general, as a story, Mud Row contains little surprise throughout, even finding its way to a far-too-pat happy ending that wraps things up in a neat bow that almost betrays the seriousness that the piece sometimes thinks it's aiming for.

Thank goodness then for Tiffany Renee Johnson, giving the production enough grit and momentum to power all three theater spaces at Theater Wit. Perhaps this is due to her character having the clearest and most dire stakes of anyone in the narrative, a recovering drug addict squatting in her old family home, constantly wrestling with how to reconcile the sins of her past with the hope and potential of her future. Johnson's rhythms and presence are deeply felt, effortlessly building a powerful bond with each of her scene partners, and I'd argue her work is perhaps worth the price of admission alone.

If you consider me a broken record across my reviews regarding my inclination towards a focus on the "How" of theater-making over the "What" and "Why," then it's primarily because I think contemporary theater makers (to a large degree) seem to be consistently neglecting the "How" altogether. Audiences deserve interesting stories about interesting people, true, but they also deserve atmosphere and weight and good pacing and coherent design. Without creating something that truly feels vivid and alive, productions like this one will consistently feel like, apologies, a stick in the mud.

Mud Row runs an estimated 2 hours and 15 minutes with a 15-minute intermission, and performs at Theater Wit (1229 W Belmont) through November 15th 2026. Tickets are available HERE.

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