The Wilma presents James Ijames’s The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington

As in 2014, when Miz Martha (for brevity’s sake) first appeared under the auspices of the now-defunct Flashpoint Theatre, the play reveals Ijames’s fabulous imagination and capacity for taking big swings. A furious fantasia on the waning days of America’s first First Lady, it makes an inspired programming choice as celebrations of the country’s 250th anniversary kick into high gear.

Martha’s misdemeanors

Ijames refuses to embrace the foundational myths of patriotism or the benevolence of the people who created them. He depicts Martha Washington (Nancy Boykin) as febrile and wasting away on her deathbed—yet she still summons the strength to command the enslaved people whom her husband promised freedom upon her demise. These include her devoted attendant Ann Dandridge (Kimberly S. Fairbanks), whom historians believe may have been her half-sister.

The action straddles the corporeal world and the afterlife, where Martha becomes a contestant on a game show skewering American history and finds herself on the block in a chattel slavery auction. The trial referenced in the title also occurs, with Martha’s high crimes and misdemeanors litigated by a fast-talking attorney (a schticky Anthony Martinez-Briggs).

Diminishing elements

Miz Martha unfolds as a non-linear, narratively discursive work, and it requires a production pitched to the same feverish heights. Unfortunately, this revival often feels too timid under the direction of Brett Ashley Robinson, who too frequently defaults to a bland, realist style. There are many directions to go here—play up the vaudevillian angles with garish design and performance elements, or highlight a palpable anger among the characters for being misled and mistreated—but this staging chooses the path of least resistance.

The production elements also look diminished on the Wilma’s vast, imposing stage. Colin McIlvaine represents the Washington estate through a simple bed and hearth, which doesn’t communicate its grandeur or the suffering that human beings endured there. Some aspects of the afterlife strike the right fantastical note, but throughout Maria Shaplin’s lighting design remains bland. Nikki Delhomme’s understated costume designs work for the play’s more realistic sections but not its whimsical ones, and Jordan McCree’s sound design eclipses the power of the human voice.

Serving Miz Martha

Boykin created Miz Martha in the Flashpoint production a dozen years ago, and it would have been more interesting to see a different actor’s take on the role. She leans too far into naturalism to make Martha either a loathsome or a pitiable figure, and she never quite hits the right tone in the more outwardly comedic scenes. Boykin seems super-attenuated next to the formidable Fairbanks, who imbues Ann with a righteous countenance.

This staging of Miz Martha benefits from fine acting elsewhere, especially the consistently solid work of Steven Anthony Wright. Ciera Gardner and Jada Mayo give distinctive performances as a pair of enslaved women who openly and gleefully wish for Martha’s passing—all while contemplating which home furnishings they’ll abscond with when their freedom is granted. These characters serve an amusing function, but they seem to be closely modeled without acknowledgement on Minnie and Dodo from Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon (Ijames acted in the Wilma’s 2016 production of it).

Amid unjust foreign wars and the mounting horrors of the current presidential administration, audiences need plays that question the full-throated endorsement of America’s greatness. We need plays, too, that treat our historical figures as people with feet of clay. Miz Martha belongs onstage in 2026, as America 250 ramps up, but I wish it had been better served.

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