Ohio State Murders is a meditation on violence. Violence as in murder. Violence as in racism. Violence committed against Black people that is swiftly buried. The Broadway debut of 91-year-old playwright Adrienne Kennedy captures these realities with its vivid language and world building. But Ohio State Murders stumbles given its concealed retelling.
In Kennedy’s non-linear work, Suzanne Alexander (Audra McDonald) is a Black former student of Ohio State University who recalls the murder of her infant daughter while giving a speech at the college. Once a budding scholar in the school’s English department, Alexander’s brief entanglement with white English professor Robert Hampshire (Bryce Pinkham) produces twin daughters. Alexander is later expelled, separated from fellow friend Iris Ann (Abigail Stephenson) and her children’s father.
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