Reviews
Review: Black Rep's 'Behind the Sheet' is poignant and powerful
By Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post Dispatch
Slavery has long been condemned as an American abomination and embarrassment — and an institution that belies the nation’s mantra of freedom, equality and opportunity for all. But for most of the 19th century, slavery was a brutal reality. And perhaps more disturbingly, routinely accepted as a fact of life.
That’s the social backdrop of “Behind the Sheet,” playwright Charly Evon Simpson’s spellbinding, fact-based tale of abuse and injustice in 1840s Alabama. Directed by Ron Himes, the poignant and powerful Black Rep production runs through April 3.
The play is inspired by the true story of J. Marion Sims, who until recently was celebrated as “the father of modern gynecology.” But to achieve that status, the physician and plantation owner conducted unethical experiments on enslaved Black women.
Review: ‘Behind the Sheet’ From The Black Rep Depicts Medical Advancement Via Indifferent Cruelty
By Mark Bretz, The Ladue News
Highlights: The Black Rep scores a trifecta with its harrowing, superior presentation of a remarkable script by playwright Charly Evon Simpson and the amazing research behind this fictitious story based on real people and events in 19th-century America.
Story: A Philadelphia physician named Dr. George Barry moves to Alabama in the 1840s after his wife’s wealthy family bequeaths him a plantation. The Northerner has little trouble in many ways in acclimating to the South, where he views the slaves who work the plantation as his “property.”
Regional Reviews: St. Louis
Behind the Sheet
By Richard T. Green, Talkin Broadway
It seems to me that if you recast The Handmaid's Tale with a mostly Black cast, you'd end up with Behind the Sheet, a riveting two and a half hour show that debuted in 2019 (Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York City). Except Behind the Sheet is a fact-based, historical drama, and not just dystopian science fiction, despite the likeness of pain and suffering. Behind the Sheet is being staged this month by The Black Rep, at the Center of Contemporary Arts, and most of the second act flies by in the wink of an eye.
BWW Review: BEHIND THE SHEET at The Black Rep At COCA
By James Lindhorst, Broadway World
Charly Evon Simpson's BEHIND THE SHEET is a fictional story based on real life events of the inhumane experimentation and treatment of enslaved women who sustained childbirth obstetric fistulas in the birth canal. In BEHIND THE SHEET, Dr. George Barry purchases infirmed slave women from plantation owners to perform experimental surgeries without the use of anesthesia. While Dr. Barry ultimately finds a cure, it is the slave women who endured the pain and suffering of these injuries who drive the narrative as they are treated as human lab rats to find a cure.