But a portrait of loss—something similar to the Job-like suffering Bruce conveyed in Steppenwolf’s Head of Passes last year—isn’t exactly what Gardley is going for. After Emmanuel’s funeral, the play veers off in another direction. Mary is shaken from the private contemplation of her sorrow by an encounter on the CTA with the ghost of civil rights activist Ida B. Wells (Jacqueline Williams), who in real life died in 1931. She gives Mary a quick pep talk and, apparently needing no further encouragement, Mary promptly hits the social-justice circuit, speaking at political rallies and debating right-wingers on radio talk shows.
