'creation stories and all the important importants' Off-Broadway review — how a playwright escapes the grind

Read our review of creation stories and all the important importants off Broadway, a new play written by Mfoniso Udofia and presented by Lincoln Center Theater.

Summary

• creation stories and all the important importants is about a woman trying to juggle the pressures of IVF, writer's block, her job, and more
• The show attempts to explore sprawling themes related to stress and incorporate fantastical elements but could go deeper
• The show is recommended for fans of other current shows, like School Girls and Wanted, that center Black women's stories, and fans of the TV shows playwright Mfoniso Udofia has written for, like A League of Their Own and Pachinko

“I can be good to you,” a woman (Abigail C. Onwunali) tells her belly, which she just self-injected for an IVF procedure in hopes of a healthy pregnancy. But in Mfoniso Udofia's creation stories and all the important importants, life will break down the body and brain of this writer, professor, and aspiring mom. Textually, it’s an inventive play that explores the expansiveness of imagination with Nigerian mythic elements. But visually, Lincoln Center Theater's production, under director Tamilla Woodard, is a little suffocated in the Claire Tow Theater.

But it’s a moving enough portrait of a Black woman surviving the pressure cooker of time, her body, and societal expectations. The play opens with the "thegrownwoman" (as the character's name is stylized) tossing and turning as she dreams of Raffia (Donnetta Lavinia Grays), a dancing, straw-covered goddess. This immediately establishes that the woman’s journey will be mythical yet earthbound, laborious yet stimulating.

Once the dream fades, movement director Adesola Osakalumi finds bodily and mental stakes in the woman tugging at her bed sheets, overrelying on her Alexa to research exercise dos and don’ts, dealing with an unkind ankle, and prepping for her umpteenth IVF appointment. Not to mention that her writer’s block is so severe she catches herself copying Shakespeare and Beckett. “I got Beckett in me?” she says.

Following her is her childhood self (Savannah Commodore), who's possibly also her future daughter. Initially an invisible spirit, the child laments the woman’s increasing distress and breaks into irresistible pouts, suggesting that this child always wanted to aid and understand her difficult mother.

In a more perplexing entrance, Grays re-arrives in pink rapper getup as Mr. Conrad, implied to be a childhood imaginary friend with horse attributes. “I’m so desperate I wrote my own deus ex machina,” the woman frets. Grays’s and Commodore’s characters function as fairy godmothers providing music, sustenance, and sleep, during which projected backdrops (by Katherine Freer) reveal words like “nom nom nom” and “zzzzzzzzzzzzz.” Udofia suggests that primal, mundane rituals of rest, like eating and sleeping, are valuable self-care as well as writing material. One has to nourish the body before unleashing the “play” in playwriting.

Conversely, if creation stories is a rallying cry to break free from the grind of life, the proscenium feels too confining for its heroine. The woman trudges her way through Jason Ardizzone-West’s abstract set consisting of exercise-block towers that double as a house, and clumps of dirty laundry. Her “bed” is a strip of a circular path protruding from the ground, an apt metaphor of getting out bed and into daily life. It’s playful, unobstructive architecture that stays tidy when the woman spirals into stress.

The script also leaves stray threads, among them a fleeting phone call indicating that she was prevented from teaching a playwright “too unruly” for a conventional, white-dominated curriculum (it’s written all over Onwunali’s face that this has happened before). Also, her financial situation is told rather than shown. How do the IVF bills affect her savings? What sacrifices of pleasure or self-care did she make? A writer can’t tackle everything in one day, but the woman's pressures, institutional and personal, are all invoked but untouched.

Holding the world-weary center together is Onwunali, especially when the woman’s surroundings grow magical. She navigates the fragility of “having it all” and the strength of being a creator who, at last, finds a way to create again, and with joy.

creation stories and all the important importants summary

“What happens when an exceptional woman cannot exceptional her way through?” playwright Mfoniso Udofia asks in creation stories and all the important importants. Having gone through five failed attempts of IVF and severe writer’s block, a character known only as “thegrownwoman” resolves to soldier through her sixth IVF attempt, an Alexa-prescribed exercise regimen, doctors' calls, her professor job, and sense of inadequacy. Meanwhile, the spirit of her childhood self observes her and desperately longs to help free the woman from society-imposed structures and anxieties.

What to expect at creation stories and all the important importants

Before the show, the usher will warn the audience to turn off their cell phones, especially since the words “Alexa” and “Siri” are spoken. The play runs 95 minutes with no intermission. The play deals with depression, fertility struggles, and intergenerational trauma, and some blood is shown.

In the backdrop is a row of slanting, canvas-like screens for photos, text, and home videos. Katherine Freer’s projections are efficient and economical, with city photos adding pleasing, painterly animation. At times, reliance on the projections seems to have driven the creative team away from practical stagecraft — the projections won't clarify, for example, that Mr. Conrad represents a horse spirit.

What audiences are saying about creation stories and all the important importants

Theatregoers at early performances have shared mixed responses to creation stories and all the important importants on online forums like Reddit.

• "It’s a beautiful story of a middle aged woman learning to find harmony in life’s complexities and in the end finds it in her dreams. The acting across the board is riveting, all three actors gave very committed performances. The use of projections and lighting elevated the sense of magic and play in the show." - Reddit user u/Jaigurl-8
• "I went up and down with the writing of the play itself (there were moments that I found remarkable and some I found tonally confounding) but the lead performance by Abigail Onwunali was absolutely astounding." - Reddit user u/BitterOstrich6
• "I understand the hassle, hormones, and chaos may be exactly what the adult woman is going through, but they made me unable to settle down to interpret the play with peace." - Reddit user u/Kathrynxuxx
• “The show was so honest and relatable. It held up a mirror and examined a heartbreaking and very common tragedy of life then showed us a way through the storm towards life again. Very touching. I loved it!” - My +1 at the show

Who should see creation stories and all the important importants

• The play may draw fans of Mfoniso Udofia’s writing work on television shows like A League of Their Own, 13 Reasons Why, Lessons in Chemistry, and Pachinko.
• If you want to see personal works by Black women playwrights, check out creation stories alongside Broadway shows like School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play and Wanted.
• Those who caught Savannah Commodore and Abigail C. Onwunali in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone on Broadway earlier this year might want to see them again, especially as the young Commodore buds as a performer.

Learn more about creation stories and all the important importants off Broadway

A playwright writing about writing doesn’t have to be an exhausting meta-affair — it can be an imaginative one. Through a Nigerian American mythic lens, Mfoniso Udofia’s personal play is a chronicle of health, writer’s block, and self-care, but it doesn't explore all these themes deeply enough. Somewhere in the stars, there’s a future iteration of creation stories and all the important importants that could be as expansive as its charms require.

Learn more about creation stories and all the important importants on New York Theatre Guide. Creation stories and all the important importants is at the Claire Tow Theater through November 1.

Photo credit: creation stories and all the important importants off Broadway. (Photos by Valerie Terranova)