Review: The Blood Quilt, a Bewitching Family Drama at Lincoln Center Theater

Over 100 quilts hang from the walls of the Jernigan home, like tapestries in the ancestral manor of a great family. And that’s essentially what they are, telling heroic and heartbreaking stories about the Jernigans of old. There’s the quilt into which Matilda Jernigan sewed a secret message to communicate with her lover on a neighboring plantation. Callie Jernigan made one featuring the bandanas that floated ashore after the two lovers drowned themselves, like an antebellum Romeo and Juliet. Only the centerpiece of great-great-great-great-grandma Ada’s quilt remains. She unstitched it and gave it away to her children, piece by piece, each time one of them was sold to a distant enslaver.

The surviving Jernigans, all half-sisters, have gathered on Kwemera Island off the coast of Georgia (the fictional island seems to be based on Sapelo, home of the last Gullah community in the United States) to sew a quilt in honor of their recently passed mother, Redell. But as so often happens following the death of a mercurial matriarch, old grudges are exhumed alongside a financial mess left by the deceased. That’s the premise of Katori Hall’s excellent drama, The Blood Quilt, now making its off-Broadway debut with Lincoln Center Theater under the bewitching direction of Lileana Blain-Cruz.

The eldest, Clementine (Crystal Dickinson), lived with mama until the end, caring for her as she slowly vomited up what was left of her liver. Second-born Gio (Adrienne C. Moore) had a contentious relationship with her mother, which has left her with a lasting resentment of youngest daughter Amber (Lauren E. Banks), who attended UVA and is now an entertainment lawyer in Hollywood and was therefore mom’s favorite. Third daughter Cassan (Susan Kelechi Watson) is a nurse who has brought along her 15-year-old daughter Zambia (Mirirai), who is going through a bit of a Muslim phase, which has followed hard upon her Goth phase. Perhaps joining the quilting circle will give her a new perspective in her quest for identity, but time is of the essence.

Redell didn’t pay her property taxes for the last seven years. The state will seize the house if they don’t cough up $256,527.04. The only thing in the estate possibly worth that much, by Amber’s estimation, is the complete collection of quilts.

The theater is a sentimental form long dominated by the propertied classes, and we are typically meant to see the sale of a precious family heirloom as a tragedy, whether it is a cherry orchard or hand-carved piano. But why should the living struggle and sacrifice to please the dead? To Hall’s great credit, she presents the economic realities of the Jernigan family with clear eyes, while still conjuring quite a lot of magic.

Blain-Cruz stages a production overflowing with wonder but grounded in real and recognizable family relationships. The attention she has put into the latter is evident in the fleshy and emotionally unguarded performances, which make us feel like voyeurs hiding behind one of the quilts.

Moore’s Gio is unapologetically brassy and deeply wounded. We get the sense that she clashed with her mother because they were so much alike. Watson’s Cassan is every bit the third child, quietly competent and accustomed to being ignored while tending to her own garden of anger. Playing the eldest who has stayed closest, Dickinson feels like the ambassador of a soon to be bygone world.

Mirirai sensitively portrays the coming generation, albeit from the perspective of a decade ago (The Blood Quilt debuted in 2015 and the action is set then, back when teenagers still used Facebook). As Amber, Banks arms herself with a smartphone and the meritocratic rage that drives this country. This is meant to be a visit dominated by arts and crafts. But when Amber shows up in her blazer (subtly effective costumes by Montana Levi Blanco) and $500 weave (hair by Krystal Balleza), we know she means business.

Shrewdly, Blain-Cruz has created an environment that refuses to cooperate with Amber’s idea of perfection. Adam Rigg’s set exudes a lived-in feeling, with the vibrant quilts hanging from every available surface, retracting to reveal a bedroom space on the second level. We can see the Atlantic Ocean in the backdrop changing colors as a storm approaches (beautiful lighting by Jiyoun Chang). We hear the surf (sound by Palmer Hefferan) and can see the waves splashing over the house (projections by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew), threatening to pull a whole way of life out with the tide.

The Blood Quilt is a hearty and heartfelt family drama set in a mostly overlooked corner of America. Like the culture it depicts, you need to see it before it is gone.