I’m a
bit on-the-fence about this Ahrens & Flaherty musical. It has some really nice elements going for
it, but I think it also stumbles in places.
In general, I’d place it in the middle of the pack for Ahrens &
Flaherty shows I’m familiar with, with the score being somewhat better than the
story (some spoilers.)
Based
on a novel of the same name by Sherley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose follows the lives of two women in the Antebellum
South. Dessa Rose is a teenage slave
girl infamous among plantation owners as the “devil-woman,” due to having led a
slave revolt. The pregnant Dessa Rose is
brought to prison to be hanged for her crimes, and upon her escape, she crosses
paths with Ruth, a white woman who’s struggled to keep her farm running since
the departure of her husband some time before.
The two women immediately misjudge and mistrust one another, but
circumstances throw them together and, providing they can cooperate, just might
offer both of them a way out of their situation.
I
haven’t read the book this is based on, so I don’t know how closely the story
follows it, but the narrative bothers me in a few places, mainly because I feel
it underestimates what being a slave was like.
The first is an account of Dessa Rose being whipped as a punishment,
with her master only striking her “‘round her private places” so she won’t have
visible signs of disobedience and therefore be easier to sell off. Now, this is obviously reprehensible and I
have no problem believing that a slave owner would devise such a cruel
punishment (although, with a female slave, they might not in the interest of
making sure she could still bear children.)
On the other hand, I do think it’s
naïve to think a potential buyer wouldn’t see her completely naked. It seems to suggest a tiny shred of bodily
autonomy that slaves just didn’t have.
(Note: although the scenario
problematic to me, I love one of the lines in the song dealing with it. “Don’t damage the goods. / Don’t scar where
it shows” – chilling.) I also call foul
on the relative ease with which Dessa Rose and the other slaves run their
“scheme” of having Ruth repeatedly sell them, running away, and meeting up to
be sold again. It almost comes across
like escaping slavery is a cakewalk, and I find it hard to believe that they
wouldn’t have lost a larger number of their group, either from being unable to
get away or from being killed in attempts to flee.
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