Kpfa - Bay Area Theater

KPFA Theatre critic Richard Wolinsky reviews “Sally and Tom” by Suzan Lori-Parks at Marin Theatre through November 23, 2025.           Text of Review: All Men Are Created Equal. Or so Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. It’s kind of weird then, to know that Jefferson owned slaves. And it’s even weirder to realize that one of them, Sally Hemings, was his mistress. What was that about? Which doesn’t stop playwrights and screenwriters and novelists from trying to figure it out. Thomas Jefferson took to his bed a child, fourteen years old, a human child he owned. The Merchant Ivory film, Jefferson in Paris, presented the 22 year old Thandwe Newton as Hemings. Thomas and Selly, a play produced at Marin Theatre in 2017 showed Hemings as in her late teens, and perhaps a bit of a seductress. That one didn’t go over well in the age of me too. What Suzan Lori-Parks does in her play, Sally and Tom, first presented in 2022 at the Guthrie,  and now through November 23rd at Marin Theatre, is find a w