Review of: 10 Things to Do Before I Die

It is clear from 10 Things to Do Before I Die that Zakiyyah Alexander is new at playwriting. There are at least one too many stories going on, a few pretentious sequences in order to be theatrical, and unsubtle delivery of exposition. However, it is also clear that Ms. Alexander, when she gets down to the business of honest writing, can pack a punch.

Two sisters, one living downtown and one living uptown, share a very brakish, as well as fractious, relationship. The older one, Vida, is a high school teacher currently having her class examine "A Streetcar Named Desire". The younger one, Nina, is in the middle of writer's block for her second book. Her previous memoir/novel having received a fair amount of success apparently reveals too many truths for Vida to handle. Abandoned by their mother and eventually by their alcoholic father, the two women were raised by one of their grandmothers and not unsurprisingly have developed psychological issues. Vida goes looking for love in all the wrong places, again and again. For the past year she has been seeing a married man. Nina finds love in all the right places - her current man a catch and a half - but she has commitment problems not to mention a prescription drug habit. Both of their relationships come to a head when their father's inheritance, a pitiful amalgam of children's things and personal items, arrives in several boxes.

When Ms. Alexander sticks to the sisters' main issues, the situations engage us. Their relationship to each other has depth and it's easy to see how they behaved with each other as children. But there is so much meandering between the scenes of the real drama as to question the point of many digressions. There are a couple of dream sequences that become shorthand for expressing emotions somewhat dishonestly and a sub-plot involving a student that embodies a misguided idea that goes nowhere.

The play is not helped by Jackson Gay's slow and ponderous direction. We occasionally don't even know where we are. There are also some casting issues. Natalie Venetia Belcon as Vida and Tracie Thomas as Nina look far apart in age, and Mr. Gay seems to have told them to play their opposing temperaments to an extreme so that we never get the sense they're sisters. Ms. Belcon's steely, no-nonsense attitude disassociates her body from her voice, and only when she allows her pain to surface does she seem complete. Ms. Thomas often pushes for results, sometimes telegraphing the character's moods, especially her anxiety. However, she does capture the essence of a child that arises in times of need and when she wants to manipulate. The men in the women's lives are played by Francois Battiste, Kyle Beltran and Dion Graham and they do the best they can with underwritten roles.

As part of the Second Stage Uptown Series, a program to showcase new writing talent, the question must be asked - do the playwrights receive any help from the program other than sponsorship? The problems with 10 Things to Do Before I Die seem easily fixable. This question seems like a problem with all of New York City's main theatre companies that have programs and productions for fledgling work. In the end, they might be doing these new authors a disservice.

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