‘You may be the wealthiest coloured woman in New Orleans, but you built this house on sand, lies and dead bodies’.
Marcus Gardley began his writing career as a poet before becoming a playwright; and his flair for the poetic is evident in the mesmerising lyric dialogue of The House That Will Not Stand. The language runs rich with imagery and the wry metaphorical description typical of literature set in the American Deep South. With “mouths the size of the Mississippi” and irises that “wither into the soft hues of morning” or “burn bloodshot like a sunset”; the themes of mysticism and the supernatural are propelled by the play’s language, established from the off by the ominous grey-haired corpse splayed on the dining room table and developing into voodoo ritual and black magic as the story unfolds.