REVIEW: “Thanksgiving Play” in Moline a Daffy, Delicious Feast
The Black Box Theatre in downtown Moline deserves all the praises in the world for presenting another spot-on Quad Cities premiere, “The Thanksgiving Play” by Larissa FastHorse.
But if the Native American playwright aimed to present the long-misunderstood or ignored perspective of Indigenous peoples in this beloved American holiday, this ridiculous satire – which mercilessly roasts the four characters — is laugh-out-loud funny, but fails that crucial test.
The acclaimed 2018 play centers around a group of four well-intentioned but culturally insensitive white theater artists who attempt to create a politically correct school play about the first Thanksgiving while struggling with their own biases and the lack of Native representation.
Thayne Lamb and Adrienne Evans in “The Thanksgiving Play,” to run through Nov. 1.
The play (which premiered in Portland, Ore., and had its Broadway debut in 2023) is a “satirical comedy that critiques the well-meaning but misguided attempts of four white characters tasked with creating a politically correct Thanksgiving pageant for elementary school students. Their goal is to celebrate Native American Heritage Month while navigating their own biases and the complexities of cultural representation. However, the irony lies in the fact that none of them are Native American, leading to a series of comedic and revealing situations as they grapple with their lack of authenticity and understanding,” according to a synopsis.
FastHorse — a member of the Sicangu Lakota nation, and 2020 winner of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” – is the first female Native American playwright to have a play produced on Broadway. Her work is known for blending humor with social critique, particularly regarding Indigenous representation in American culture
“The Thanksgiving Play” certainly presents a fraught, awkward subject, has a cornucopia of PC language, and the four Black Box actors each are rock-solid in their roles, reflecting big, sometimes clashing personalities.
Thayne Lamb as Jaxton and Adrienne Evans as Logan.
Adrienne Evans is high-strung and stressed as the vegan director Logan, who gets physically ill at the thought of over 45 million turkeys being killed each year for Thanksgiving. Thayne Lamb is hilarious as the super mellow actor/yoga dude Jaxton; Cole McFarren is strong and dominating as the teacher/playwright Caden, and Celeaciya Olvera is the perfect combination of ego, beauty, and ditz as the selfish, simple L.A. actress Alicia.
The first bit of confusion for me is what the program lists as its setting – a high school drama classroom. The single, colorfully detailed set on the Black Box stage (designed by theatre co-founder/artistic director Lora Adams) is clearly an elementary school, with alphabet letters across the top of one wall and a low table and chairs.
The script doesn’t specify what grade level the Thanksgiving play is intended for, but an initial pre-recorded video (a Thanksgiving take-off on “The 12 Days of Christmas”) also sounds like grade-school students.
The program director’s note from the blazingly talented director Alex Richardon says “The Thanksgiving Play” “offers an Indigenous perspective of our national turkey day,” but it really doesn’t, since it doesn’t feature any Native American characters or present any true insight into the life of the tribes at the time of the Pilgrims’ arrival in the early 17th century.
Adrienne Evans, Thayne Lamb and Cole McFarren at Black Box Theatre, Moline.
Caden in the play is the true history buff and researcher, at one point presenting a PowerPoint with Thanksgiving-related information going back 4,000 years, references to immigrants to Florida and Texas, and a 1631 battle, in which English “separatists” (Puritan Pilgrims) killed 400 Native men, women and children in New England.
The only “representation” of Native characters in the play is the playful, callous use of blood-spattered mannequin heads of dead Indians, that Caden and Jaxton toss around, causing Logan to freak out.
FastHorse had been told her plays were “uncastable” due to having mostly Native American roles, and “The Thanksgiving Play” skewers that notion, comprised of a quartet of clueless, stereotypically “woke” white artists. Richardson notes this daffy play (which must be a riot for the real actors) is one of the most commonly produced plays in America.
CeCe Olvera, left, and Adrienne Evans in “The Thanksgiving Play.”
Its goofy, literate content largely comes from FastHorse’s own experience in the theater industry, where she would often be the only person of color in a sea of white, “and she would witness first hand how well intentioned but misguided artists would tangle themselves in knots in order to be politically correct,” Richardson wrote.
“This play explores just that concept: how do a group of white artists tackle a topic on behalf of another group of people with absolutely no input of any kind from any of the people they hope to represent,” the director said, adding audiences will doubtlessly recognize one of the personalities on stage, and that some theater people are really like this.
While Logan initially intends for the play to be improvised, and they learn that Alicia is not the real Native American actress they thought she was (the play required it after getting a “Native American awareness through the arts” grant), Caden brings his comically huge binder with pages for an actual script.
Thayne Lamb and Adrienne Evans in “The Thanksgiving Play.”
The breezy 90-minute show (without intermission) depicts a single day’s rehearsal, and highlights include the actors’ pretending to eat, a side personal bit where Olvera instructs Evans on how to act sexy, to attract a man, and Evans doing rap in a video “Hamilton” parody.
Logan (who’s the most broadly emotional character here) is almost too culturally sensitive, to a degree that infantilizes the population she is supposedly trying to respect and protect. In this way, maybe some of the Indigenous perspective is presented, as the audience can see from a third-person perspective all the awkwardness that occurs in how people try to represent them. Their presence is ironically through their absence, but we don’t get any clear feeling for the Native American feelings.
Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse.
The always entertaining show runs through Nov. 1 at 1623 5th Ave., Moline. Tickets are $18 and can be purchased online at theblackboxtheatre.com or at the door.
NOTE: Before the show, Adams noted that the only announced Black Box for 2026 she is ready to say is another QC premiere – next summer, BBT will present “The Shark is Broken,” about the making of the 1975 blockbuster “Jaws.”
The play — by British playwrights Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon — is a comedic exploration of the behind-the-scenes drama that took place during the filming of Jaws, which was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Shaw’s father, Robert Shaw, as well as Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss. The 2019 stage play (which opened in England and premiered on Broadway in 2023) features just three actors in those roles.
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