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Their skin just doesnt hold together like it used to.
Limbs drop off without warning; even doing a salt scrub in the shower is a risk.
(Stacey Derosiers lighting throbs at sunset intensity throughout.)
The sandy expanse with trapped-but-cheerful women recalls Samuel BeckettsHappy Days,but Simpsons emptiness isnt static.
These women have come deliberately to the desert; they are also able toleavethe desert.
This is no existential Beckettian prison.
This is the wilderness where you throw your weakest self away.
At risk of early death?
Then there is a lifestyle influencer ready to sell you a wellness cure.
Yet not everything Adah is offering comes in the form of pointless lotions and leafy greens.
Youre on the ground, Adah says, as Odessa fizzes restlessly.
Know you are on the ground.Is this hand-wavey or helpful?
At Adahs direction, Angela and Odessa nap in the sand, and it does them real good.
The show is a little dozy itself; its that dedicated to rest and recuperation.
It drifts and sifts and scatters, as does Simpsons story, which never coheres into a solid landscape.
After she builds a clever allegory about Black womens health, Simpsons sure touch slackens.
Theres a vivid first scene, and then the play almost immediately begins to lose its urgency.
The radical nature of self-care converts here into a message about relaxing and putting aside the need for answers.
(Shes been on New Yorkers televisions, doing news and talk and voice-overs,for a generation.)
The play is ambivalent, in the end, about wellness claims.
If something doesnt hurt, maybe it helps?
Still, I wouldnt trust a crystal with my health.
Wattss voice, though, is medicine; Ive tried it, and it works.
Sandblastedis at the Vineyard Theatre through March 13.
