While the Broadway musical “Hamilton” elevated the status of Alexander Hamilton from a mostly historical afterthought to a cultural icon, “Sally & Tom,” a play currently at the Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland, it doesn’t do Hamilton’s fellow Founding Father Thomas Jefferson any such favors.
As we know from our history books, Jefferson was the third president of the United States and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence.
These truths are self-evident.
Also true: Jefferson owned over 600 enslaved people, including Sally Hemings, with whom he had a decades-long relationship, fathering at least six children with her. The relationship started when Jefferson was 41 and Hemmings was 14. Jefferson never freed Hemmings.
“I did hateful things,” the character Tom/Mike says in a Shakespearean aside near the end of act one.
The term founding father takes on quite a different meaning.
As America celebrates its 250th birthday, many celebrations are planned. Sally & Tom is not one of those celebrations. It’s a serious, and sometimes funny, exploration into how history will, and should, remember Jefferson.
It’s a play-within-a-play written by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Suzan Lori-Parks who has made a career debunking myths.
A theater group called The Good Company puts on a show called “The Pursuit of Happiness” in the present day about Hemmings and Jefferson. The playwright Luce plays Sally and the director Mike plays Tom. They flash back to Monticello in 1790.
Things get complicated. Art imitates life, and vice versa.
Mike and Luce are romantically involved. Arguments, some intense, ensue as to how to portray the relationship. Should the angry speech by Hemmings’s brother stay in the show or be cut? Should one of the characters slap another? Was it love? Was it rape? Do we really know?
The play’s clever set design works perfectly for the play-within-a-play concept and features excellent individual performances — especially by Renea S. Brown, who shines as Sally and Luce. Brown, known for her extensive Shakespearian work, will surely win awards for her performance.
The show, perhaps a tad long at almost three hours, is told through Hemmings’s perspective. It’s is called “Sally & Tom,” not “Tom & Sally,” for a reason.
“Sally & Tom” is about race, power, myths and how we view history through the lens of the present. You leave thinking and asking more questions than you had before the show. And that’s the point.
“Sally & Tom” is currently playing at Round House Theatre through Sunday. The show includes one intermission. Limited tickets are still available and can be purchased online.