Reviews - June 2023

CohabitUS: Toward covival

A review of/reflection on ‘Help’ by Claudia Rankine

April Matthis (right foreground) and “Help” cast, 2022. Photo: Kate Glicksberg. Courtesy The Shed.

Covival, not just survival. 

There are many chairs and no tables in this depressingly uplifting play, Help, which is about a new table we need right NOW, “NOW that is the ‘n-word,’” as the play says: a kind of roundtable, virtual and actual, where we can all sit around to talk “us,” cohabitus, especially the souls of White folks.