Bonding Behind Bars ‘And I and Silence,’ a Prison Drama by Naomi Wallace
Charles IsherwoodAugust 26, 2014: Women in prison: the new black? It’s mere coincidence, but with the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black having become one of the most talked-about television shows of the past few years, along comes And I and Silence, a play by Naomi Wallace about two young women incarcerated in the 1950s. Can “Caged: The Musical,” an all-singing, all-dancing update of that immortal B movie starring Eleanor Parker, be far behind? Fans of the Netflix show will probably not find much to satisfy them in Ms. Wallace’s play, which opened on Monday night at the Pershing Square Signature Center, kicking off the Signature Theater Company’s new season on a dirge-like note. The author of the well-regarded, much-produced black-plague drama One Flea Spare (from 1995) and several subsequent plays, Ms. Wallace does not write pulp. True, And I and Silence does contain a culminating spasm of violence, as well as a sexual encounter between its two characters, Dee and Jamie, who meet in the lockup when they are both still teenagers. (One is 17, the other about to turn the same age.) But it’s a long, dreary wait for any drama to emerge.
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