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'Sojourner' offers truth, but with too many tears

The fearless abolitionism and feminism of Isabella Baumfree - better known to us as Sojourner Truth - inspired U.S. presidents to seek her out. But Baumfree, who died in her mid-80s in 1883, produced more than impassioned speeches. She left behind a personal account of slavery, a harrowing record of a human being treated as property, sold time and again, subdued, humiliated.

The fearless abolitionism and feminism of Isabella Baumfree - better known to us as Sojourner Truth - inspired U.S. presidents to seek her out. But Baumfree, who died in her mid-80s in 1883, produced more than impassioned speeches. She left behind a personal account of slavery, a harrowing record of a human being treated as property, sold time and again, subdued, humiliated.

As it should, Richard LaMonte Pierce's play Sojourner, now at Hedgerow Theatre in Rose Valley, catalogs the miseries in Sojourner Truth's hard life.

But that's also, theatrically, its undoing. Pierce's play - essentially a one-woman recollection with other actors who serve mostly as effective window dressing - ramps up quickly to a high dramatic pitch that never wavers. As a result, Sojourner, has a single emotional dynamic: over-the-top, tearful pain.

Too bad, because Pierce has done his research; everything about the stories Truth tells, speaking directly to the audience, has the ring of authenticity. And he certainly has the dialect and syntax down. This is the plantation English of a former slave.

But because Sojourner lacks emotional nuance, it's like listening to a medley of torch songs but only their desperate crescendoes - the last verse of each. The play has a shrill quality. You become inured.

Pierce, writer in residence at the revived professional First World Theatre Ensemble in Swarthmore, has expanded the play, first performed here a dozen years ago at West Philadelphia's Bushfire Theatre and later at Hedgerow.

Now, as then, Zuhairah McGill, First World's founder and producing artistic director, plays Sojourner Truth, hurling herself into the part to both honor Pierce's script and create a clear, convincing character. Her portrayal is substantive; she offers a Sojourner Truth we can both believe and believe in, despite the fact she has essentially one note to play with.

Hedgerow's producing artistic director, Penelope Reed, stages Sojourner with virtually no set; the focus is on the woman, and Reed lets the play speak for itself. That speech, though, would be more revealing about Sojourner Truth's many victories if we heard it through fewer tears.

Sojourner

Through Feb. 6 at Hedgerow Theatre, 64 Rose Valley Rd., Rose Valley. Tickets: $22-$25. Information: 610-565-4211; www.hedgerowtheatre.org. EndText