There’s no curtain call for the brilliant ensemble of Victory Gardens’ “cullad wattah,” Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s harrowing drama about the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. Instead, the production, running through July 17, ends in a blackout that leaves audience clapping as the house lights come up, gradually realizing the cast isn’t coming out for the traditional bow. It’s a powerful, tacit acknowledgement that any sort of celebratory shift would dilute the production’s final, deeply troubling moments.
Dickerson-Despenza hits hard in this can’t-look-away drama about the devastation that ensued after the city of Flint’s 2014 switch from using water pipelined from Detroit and Lake Huron to water from the Flint River. Set over Thanksgiving 2016, “cullud wattah” hinges partially on a class-action suit Flint residents filed against state and local officials and General Motors (among others). The suit was settled last year for $626 million.
