Quentin Tarantino’s movie Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood is in part a gauzy wish fulfillment fantasy that fictionalizes and rewrites the true-life brutal murder of actor Sharon Tate. The play graveyard shift at the Goodman Theatre takes a similar, if not more practical, path. The play knows that it’s impossible to practice necromancy and raise the spirit of the beloved from the grave but hopes that perhaps it is possible to drape flowers on her legacy. Like Hollywood, graveyard shift bestows the same gentleness and beauty that Tarantino lavished on Tate. It’s an act of grace that is rarely granted to the average Black woman.
Tuttle creates a fictional Black woman named Janelle who embodies the spirit of Bland, and we follow her through her job search and move from Chicago to Texas. Actor Aneisa J. Hicks plays Janelle with full vibrancy and joy, leavened with the moments of doubt and insecurity of being a young professional striving to establish a career in a troubled economy. Director Danya Taymor does an exceptional job keeping the scenes light and frothy in the beginning, wisely anticipating the challenge of staging a story whose ending we already know. Set designer Kristen Robinson has smartly arranged the stage as a marble cemetery slab, so even as we laugh at the many mirthful moments, it ominously never fully lets us forget that lynching looms in the future like a dark shadow.
Through 3/8: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Tue 2/25, 7:30 PM, and Thu 3/5, 2 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $15-$45.
