Family get-togethers have a way of reopening old wounds and spurring surprising revelations in plays like Long Day’s Journey Into Night and August: Osage County. Although it has a few loose stitches, Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt is a welcome addition to this storied canon.

 

On Kwemera Island, off the coast of Georgia, the four Jernigan half-sisters—each has a different father—with their physical and emotional baggage in tow get together in the house where they all lived on the anniversary of the death of Mama, the matriarch, to create the latest of the family’s memory quilts. Clementine, the oldest sister, still lives there, having taken care of Mama until her final breath. Second oldest is Gio, a police officer, who’s in the middle of a nasty divorce. The third daughter, Cassan, an army nurse, brings along her teenage daughter Zambia, who’s an advertisement for TMI. The youngest—and Mama’s favorite, the others sneeringly intone—is Amber, attorney to Hollywood stars, who arrives from Southern California. 

 

Over a long weekend, the Jernigan women face down their own demons, confronting each other’s jaundiced memories and knocking the chips off the others’ shoulders. If their revelations sometimes have a contrived quality—Amber admitting that she has HIV at the close of the first act puts the play’s title in a very different light—Hall admirably never shies away from showing the resulting emotional fallout. 

 

The quilts are central to Hall’s play both as metaphor and as a living part of this family’s history. On Adam Rigg’s astonishing two-tiered set of the family home on the water, gorgeous multicolored quilts hang from every conceivable surface, visualizing the very complex fabric of the sisters’ relationships. The quilts also trigger the most dramatic subplot: after Mama’s will is read, Cassan and especially Gio are upset that Amber—the least deserving sister, in their eyes—has inherited the priceless set of these painstakingly handwoven quilts. 

 

But Clementine—who stayed next to their dying Mama while the others stayed away—has had enough, and she cuts to the chase about what being present or absent in others’ lives means; it’s Hall’s best monologue in a play filled with pregnant dialogue among this distaff quintet: 

 

 

If Hall provides one too many endings as more secrets are revealed (including a disturbing but essential scene describing statutory rape), through the mixture of tears and laughs, the real warmth of her generous portrait becomes clear. Director Lileana Blaine-Cruz, who understands the many textures of Hall’s poignant canvas, guides her marvelous cast to get to the nakedly honest emotional truth. Crystal Dickinson (Clementine), Adrienne C. Moore (Gio), Susan Kelechi Watson (Cassan), Lauren E. Banks (Amber) and Mirirai (Zambia) do extraordinarily affecting work separately and together—the most important stitches in this intricately woven Blood Quilt.