Danai Gurira (left) and Nikkole Salter in In the Continuum. Photo by James Leynse___________
Playwrights: Nikkole Salter, Danai Gurira
At: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn
Phone: ( 312 ) 443-3800; $15-$35
Runs through: June 24
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
The statistic is as astounding as the play it generated: AIDS—not heart disease, not cancer, not sickle cell—is the leading cause of death for Black women between 25 and 34. So it's all the more extraordinary that, given the long history of AIDS and HIV as a catalyst for theater, the syndrome's impact on Black women has, until now, been virtually undocumented. From The Normal Heart throu gh Angels in America and beyond, playwrights have used the virus as a catalyst to craft stories that are at once heartbreaking, inspiring and tragic—and overwhelmingly about HIV's impact on gay men.
With In the Continuum, playwright-performers Nikkole Salter and Danai Gurira take a huge step in rectifying that, with a brutally necessary and joyously entertaining piece that portrays how HIV upends the lives of two very different Black women. Zinging with unexpected humor and enraging in its unblinking portrayal of sexism and stigma, In the Continuum is that rare theatrical treasure that is drenched in humanity while being provocative, blisteringly funny and galvanizing. With raw, vibrant strokes, Salter and Gurira—each playing half a dozen or more characters—make the stories of two women with HIV leap to life even as their characters grapple with the specter of mortality. This is storytelling at its absolute finest, in the service of a story that deserves and unapologetically demands the attention of the world.
The two women at the core of In the Continuum could hardly seem more different on the surface: Abigail ( Gurira ) is a successful, ambitious television broadcaster in Zimbabwe, a hard-driving, upper-middle-class woman who married a 'great catch.' Nia ( Salter ) , by contrast, is a single high school dropout whose clubbing ways get her kicked out of a halfway house and put her precariously close to homelessness on the edges of Los Angeles' Crenshaw district. Both women learn they are pregnant early in the production, Nia from a one-night stand with a high school basketball star and Abigail by her husband. And both women also learn that they are HIV-positive thanks to the men in their lives, sending each into a maelstrom of frustration and fear that—paradoxically—generates in them the kind of steel-strong, defiant hope that defines survivors.
Gurira and Salter play Nia and Abigail as well as a range of fiercely memorable friends and relatives as well as social workers, prostitutes and professional do-gooders. The production values are simple and powerful: Two scarves worn different ways signal the entrance and exit of different characters; subtle lighting and sound cues transform a backdrop of stark, high walls from a busy Zimbabwe street to a high school auditorium to a downscale motel room.