Review: "A Pot of Basil" Seasons Its Return to 2020 with Surrealism and Humor

A Pot of Basil, or, Thank You for Being a Friend

Written by Heather Jeanne Violanti

Directed by Jannifer Sandella

Presented at The Rat NYC

68 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NYC

August 23-31, 2025

Isabel (N. Marie Teagno), Marie Antoinette (Mary Lane Townsend), and Cockroach (Lisa Whitten). Photo by Joe Pacifico

How any particular New Yorker experienced the COVID lockdown depended not only on personality and living situation but also on location, field of labor, and other socioeconomic factors. Set during the spring and summer of 2020, A Pot of Basil, or, Thank You for Being a Friend acknowledges the importance of this latter category of differences without minimizing the former and while adeptly evoking the widespread feelings of uncertainty, powerlessness, and isolation that cut across demographic lines. Zooming in (pun absolutely intended) on the experience of one woman in the early months of lockdown, A Pot of Basil, from playwright Heather Jeanne Violanti, employs an absurdist approach to evocatively capture its topsy-turvy moment, from the potential for big-picture existential crises down to longings for everyday items that were suddenly less accessible or even inaccessible–for one character here, for instance, a yearning for cheesecake functions as both a running joke and a symbol of the outsized importance assumed by that which was formerly taken for granted.

Cockroach (Lisa Whitten), Isabel (N.Marie Teagno), & Marie Antoinette (Mary Lane Townsend). Photo by Joe Pacifico

The COVID-19 pandemic is, of course, not the first time that disease has shaken the social order; characters in A Pot of Basil refer to Shakespeare, who lived in a time when the theaters might be shut down if plague deaths reached a certain point, and to Bocaccio's Decameron, a medieval collection of tales told by characters hiding from the Black Death. Both the play's title and the name of its protagonist, Isabel (N. Marie Teagno), represent links to one of the stories in The Decameron, as well as to John Keats's poetic adaptation, "Isabella, or, the Pot of Basil." Violanti's Isabel is a currently unemployed writer who lives alone in a studio apartment (the set, with Isabel's desk, food prep area, and bed in close proximity, helps to underscore the claustrophobia of her day-to-day existence within those apartment walls). Although Isabel does not have any human roommates, she does share her space with a pair of probably imaginary friends–probably because as one of them, the corporeal ghost of Marie Antoinette (Marie Lane Townsend) says, "When your world falls apart, mon ami, logic flies out the window." If the European Antoinette reflects in some way part of Isabel's identity as an immigrant from England, her second imaginary friend, a cockroach (Lisa Whitten) with an old-school NYC accent, is as New York as it gets, reflecting a different aspect of Isabel, who has herself assumed an American accent during her time here. One thing that both the jewel-bedecked queen and rather more earthy Cockroach share with one another is a love of Golden Girls re-runs, which Isabel introduced them to during a marathon binge, as a way to pass the time.

Marie Antoinette (Mary Lane Townsend) and Dot (Margaret Sullivan). Photo by Joe Pacifico

Central to The Golden Girls is friendship and/as community. Isabel, we find, is avoiding communication, but that self-imposed attempt at further isolation doesn't stop various others from trying to reach her. We see the people leaving messages for Isabel via projections on the rear wall, which otherwise primarily shows location (so, mostly the buildings seen through Isabel's window); these callers include Isabel's mother (Margaret Sullivan), who wants her to give up on both her artistic aspirations and on America and come back to England. In fact, multiple others seem to have ideas of what Isabel should do–her Aunt Helena (Margaret Sullivan) offers her a place to live in England; her ex too tells her to give up on art and "get real"--while Isabel remains mired in asking, "what am I?" and "who am I?" Her mother and ex in particular demonstrate a pressure that is exerted on artists even in more typical times to do something "real," an attitude which mirrors the primacy accorded to the so-called economy during the pandemic, whatever the human cost. Marie Antoinette and Cockroach too have some suggestions for Isabel, but they aim to point her in a rather different direction–assuming that they can convince her to go outside again.

Cockroach (Lisa Whitten). Photo by Joe Pacifico

The play's structure of short scenes with the calls often acting as transitions evokes that feeling of losing track of time, of time collapsing, that many experienced during lockdown. Across these moments, Teagno empathetically incarnates the overburdened Isabel's teetering on the edge of being completely overwhelmed, while Townsend plays Antoinette with an entertaining extravagance, and Whitten displays excellent comedic chops as Cockroach. It's ironic that Marie Antoinette turns out to be the most pro-revolution of this trio, but she, like A Pot of Basil as a whole, treats both Isabel's personal struggles, even if she points out their relationship to privilege, and struggles for social justice as valid. A Pot of Basil posits that in both cases, one needs first of all to keep fighting, and, as highlighted by the lack during the pandemic of the kind of everyday human contact that had formerly passed without notice, having a few good friends around helps–imaginary or not.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards