Deirdre Lovejoy, Donnetta Lavinia Grays (Photo:Valerie Terranova)

In The Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot

By Julia Polinsky

Family, climate, love, survival: Sarah Mantell's In The Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot, directed by Sivan Battat and now at Playwrights Horizons, takes on some big subjects.

Speculatively set in a not-too-distant future, the play gradually makes it clear that there has been a climate-change-induced rolling apocalypse. The workers in this particular Amazon warehouse search for survivors by checking the addresses on packages to see if there's anywhere left on either coast - "coast" being a movable concept, as the waters rise. They're also looking for their loved ones, hoping to be reunited. Reading the labels out loud to each other as they scan packages: that's how they search. Until a newbie, Ani (Deirdre Lovejoy) arrives, and won't participate. Jen (Donetta Lavinia Grays) tries to get Ani to join in, but for mysterious reasons, and despite the attraction between them, she keeps mum.

The tiniest tick of optimism in the midst of widespread despair largely comes from the chosen family whose RVs, cars, trucks are in the warehouse parking lot. They have bonded and grouped together as they drive from warehouse job to warehouse job for what they call The Corporation, always moving closer to the center of the American land mass. Along the way, at least one has fallen out of the caravan, and the search for her is part of what makes the group tick.

After their shifts, the workers in In The Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot move to their spot in the lot and play games, make sandwiches, bicker. Several characters briefly address the audience directly as they tell of "...the first night I slept in my car," and these stories are quite touching. The one told by Sandra Caldwell as El is particularly beautifully performed.

Sandra Caldwell (Photo: Valerie Terranova)

The dreadful feeling of corporate oppression mixed with grindingly dull work and subsistence pay finally prompts Sara (Ianne Fields Stewart) to industrial sabotage, dumping sugar into the concrete mix for new expansion of the warehouse where they work. They're all in on it, even the newbie. She turns out to have a powerful motivation to join this chosen family, and it's not just her attraction to Jen.

Performances are universally good. Author Sarah Mantell wrote this play for all women or trans characters, stipulating that the actors playing them should if possible themselves be queer or trans (In The Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot is produced in association with Breaking the Binary Theater).

 

Emmie Finckel's useful scenic design toggles back and forth from the warehouse, complete with grinding conveyor belts inside and overhead, to the distant view from the titular parking lot, with its wistfully soft background of mountains. Costumes from Mel Ng and sound by Sinan Refik Zafar divide the implicit threat from the corporation, all industrial and harsh, from the comfort of a group of friends around a campfire.

Donnetta Lavinia Grays, Ianne Fields Stewart, Tulis McCall, Sandra Caldwell, Pooya Mohseni, Barsha (Photo: Valerie Terranova)

 

When all is said and done, In The Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot is speculative fiction, and that kind of work requires a big dose of the willing suspension of disbelief. By the end of the play, that dose is not big, but huge. Choking. Willing to expand your sense of the possible, with excellent performances and a message to the audience? This show will work for you. But if you crave credible, In The Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot is a bit of a stretch.

 

 

In The Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot

At Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42 Street

Through November 17

Tickets: https://my.playwrightshorizons.org/events/amazon