←Recommendations of The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington

With superb pacing and musicality (and surreal interludes including a game show and a full-on song and dance) Ijames’ Dickensian historical/political fever dream is as darkly funny as it is unsparing. Martha Washington’s deathbed nightmare is a chillingly perfectly allegory for America’s ongoing reckoning with systemic racism and white supremacy: we may benefit, but it’s not our fault! Why should we be punished for systems we didn’t create? And I’m one of the good ones, right?! Martha’s excuses, guilt, and willful ignorance reveal the inextricable link between America’s identity and slavery.

I love this. The hypocrisy and complexity of America's beginnings are presented so vibrantly, theatrically, and refreshingly. What a wonderful piece.

A brilliant, scathing, clear-eyed fever-dream / historical reckoning. Pure genius.

Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of "Miz Martha..." was my first live theatre since the pandemic began and did not disappoint.

A gloriously theatrical piece that brings together disparate theatrical conventions and ideas into a supremely unique aesthetic whole--a well-crafted fever dream. The ensemble story-telling is bold. I appreciated the dive into history (particularly the exploration of Ann Dandridge) and the way that the play shows/illuminates the connective tissue between the historical atrocities committed against Black people in the US and the present day socio-cultural climate.

A show with tremendous theatrical energy and anger and hilarity -- a fever dream of a play whose promiscuously imaginative inventions collapse the distance between Martha Washington's moral myopia and America's sins of today. The endlessly unfolding possibilities of this script are a gift to a talented cast and design team.

Thank you for writing such a wonderfully, imaginative historical play of the past and present.
I gasped when George Washington denied owning slaves yet he and Martha never stopped pursuing their runaway slave, Ona Judge. And I will never forget the character and heart of the play, Ann Dandridge. She can no longer be denied or swept under the carpet for what she had to endure her whole life. You have given her and the other characters a voice and agency.

This play is an explosion of truth and frustration told in a fabulously creative manner. If COVID hadn't shut things down I would have been able to see this at Steppenwolf in Chicago, and now, after reading it, I am all the more disappointed I didn't get to see it staged. This is the perspective we need to be hearing history from. If you had time to watch Hamilton on Disney+, you also have time to read this work of art.

A rip-roaring, unrelenting. much needed recontextualization of a significant moment in our young nation. Beautiful at its best and hideous at its worst-- this play demands to be heard from start to finish.

A hilarious, powerful piece of theatre. The world premiere was one of the best productions I saw all year. Gleefully anachronistic. Unapologetically takes one of our Founding Mothers and gives her a balanced but unflinching look at our history of slavery. And to cover all of that ground, with a cast that's >50% women, and almost entirely African American, is wonderful.