In The Blood Character Analysis

The play In the Blood is an adaptation by Suzan-Lori Parks of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. In this play is about a single black woman, Hester, who is a mother to five fatherless children trying to survive living in poverty and dealing with her reputation as a slut. The name and plotline seemed very intriguing from the start, and being a fan of Hawthorne’s work, I was looking forward seeing to play.
The overall acting in this play was very good and flowed together really nicely. Most of what was happening was believable and the language of the dialogue was realistic. The two characters that I will be focusing on in this critique will be Hester played by Toreena Meeky, and Reverend D. played by Rufus Wood.
Meeky’s acting as Hester was overall a very good job; I was thoroughly impressed by it. However, there were times where I felt that her acting hit some flat lines. For example, there were many moments where it seemed that she was just waiting for her next line as opposed to listing
Wood’s character was the one of the more interesting one out of the whole play. His performance was very realistic and believable. He emotions and action is like many of the reverends I see today, so full of exaggerated emotions and diction so that there was no mistake of what he was saying. There were great moments where Wood’s character had a monologue where he was interacting with the audience members, making us feel like we were in church being scolded by priest who had no right to do so. Reverend D.’s character gives true meaning of a two face, where at one cheek he was a “good” reverend and he wants to help the poor and “help” Hester. But, on the other cheek, was a manipulative, money hungry, corrupt man of God who wants Hester to disappear. I like how Wood was able to play the holiest hypocrite, what seem like without