Sally & Tom Brings History's Hardest Questions to Round House Theatre

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, the celebrated author of Topdog/Underdog, delivers a bold, whip-smart theatrical rollercoaster in Sally & Tom, now playing at Round House Theatre in Bethesda through June 28, 2026. By turns funny, gut-wrenching, and unflinchingly honest, it is an entertaining explosion of the stories we tell about America's not-so-distant past, and one that lingers long after the final bow.

The premise is a nesting doll. A scrappy, proudly confrontational theatre troupe called The Good Company is staging its own play about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, a Monticello drama titled The Pursuit of Happiness set around 1790, just after the pair have returned to Virginia from several years in Paris. The company's playwright, Luce, takes the role of Sally, while her partner, Mike, directs and plays Tom. The two are not only collaborators but a couple, and after years of uncompromising, uncommercial work, the company is weary of surviving on righteousness alone. When a wealthy investor arrives with the money to mount their ambitious new show, he also arrives with notes, and the question of which truths can be spoken aloud, on stage and in life, sets rehearsals spiraling. As art and life collide, the production unearths powerful and uncomfortable truths about race, power, privilege, and the act of storytelling itself.

That collision is the engine of the evening. Parks keeps the historical narrative and the contemporary one in constant conversation, with the actors doubling as both their modern-day selves and the 18th-century figures they portray. The approach lets the audience draw its own conclusions rather than march through a tidy chronological account, and it brings the idiosyncrasies, contradictions, and hypocrisies of Jefferson's life into sharp relief. Woven through it all are thorny, very current questions about representation, ownership, and who gets to tell whose story.

Director Timothy Douglas stages the piece with a clean, crisp, unhurried hand, taking his time with the smallest gestures and setting the formality of the historical period against the looser rhythms of the modern troupe. The acting is top-notch, anchored by three commanding monologues: Josiah Bania as Jefferson, reflecting on his image and daring the audience to judge him; Renea S. Brown as Sally Hemings, confronting her own dehumanization; and Ro Boddie as James Hemings, Sally's brother and Jefferson's enslaved valet, reckoning with the indignity of bondage. Each of the three also brings full dimension to their contemporary counterparts as Mike, Luce, and Kwame. Colin Sphar proves the most chameleonic member of the ensemble, with Jamar Jones, Kimberly Gilbert, and Charlotte Kim rounding out a company that moves nimbly between centuries.

The design is every bit as compelling. Tony Cisek's scenery, built around classically styled Colonial doorframes and arches that glide across the stage to conjure both Monticello and the troupe's modern world, makes the act of stagecraft visible and visceral, with a large tapestry of the Declaration of Independence looming behind the action. The choreography by Dane Figueroa Edidi puts the minuet, the Virginia Reel, and the waltz to stunning use, supported by Matthew M. Nielson's composition and sound design and the recurring physicality of a live violin. Danielle Preston's costumes are splendid, full of vivid satins and silks, while Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew's lighting shifts from subtle to sharply defined to match the play's many moods. The evening builds to a startling finale, fireworks bursting over the set in celebration of the nation's independence as the names of the enslaved are inscribed across the stage.

Sally & Tom runs approximately three hours, including one intermission, and plays through June 28, 2026, at Round House Theatre, 4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD.