‘Sovereignty’ confronts history that still haunts

This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on August 25, 2026. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.

by Lawrence Toppman

Some years ago, as I bought pottery from a Cherokee vendor, he recoiled when I held out a $20 bill bearing the image of Andrew Jackson. He requested two tens; I requested an explanation. “If you were Jewish,” he asked, “would you like to handle money with Adolf Hitler’s face on it?”

The forced expulsion of the Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma, known nowadays as the Trail of Tears, had the murderous blessing of Ol’ Hickory in the 1830s, despite a prior U.S. Supreme Court decision that native American nations held authority over their own lands and laws.

That rankles two centuries later and provides half the basis for “Sovereignty,” the play by Mary Kathryn Nagle getting its local premiere by Three Bone Theatre. The other half, slightly less compelling but still interesting, deals with an effort by a fictional modern-day attorney to prove the Cherokee have the right to judge non-natives who commit crimes on their lands — a different kind of authority but one that reaffirms the sovereignty of native American nations.

Nagle, an attorney specializing in tribal issues, pours a lot of herself into the main character. She has given Sarah Ridge Polson (Billie D. Merritt) her grandmother’s last name and made her not only a defender of tribal rights who has clerked for federal judges but also a direct descendant of the Ridge family, who signed the disputed treaty relocating the Cherokee to Oklahoma.

Merritt, who plays her role with stubborn dignity, is one of only two actors who never appear as more than one character. The others switch back and forth between 1820 and 2020, playing people whose loyalties to each other and the Cherokee Nation get wrenched in all directions by circumstances that are often beyond their control.

You can’t tell the players without a 200-year-old scorecard, so here’s a lineup. John Ross (Mvnte July) and the father-and-son pair of Major Ridge (Marco Fuller) and John Ridge (Lance Claymore) tangle for tribal authority after the two-faced Jackson (Kyle Riggs) ignores the top court’s decision. (An autocratic president mocks the Supreme Court and refuses to abide by the U.S. Constitution? Where have we encountered that?)

Ross — at least the Ross in this play — believes the Cherokee must stay on ancestral lands in Georgia at all costs, even if they’re being burned out or killed and their women raped. The Ridges believe only relocation can keep the tribe intact, if in Oklahoma. But since a Cherokee blood law requires the execution of anyone who gives up tribal lands, the Ridges and other signers of the relocation treaty may be signing their death warrants.

Director Carolyn Dunn, costumer Lorna Bowen and lighting designer Gordon Olson keep us well aware of where we are at any moment via simple adjustments of furniture, clothing and illumination. The actors, every one of them a newcomer to Three Bone, make it clear whom we’re watching, though July’s older John Ross and modern-day Jim Ross tend to blend. As a reminder never to judge “authenticity” by facial features, skin tones or last names, they vary from dark brown to pale pink in hue and challenge traditional expectations of what a native American should look like.

I strained at various notions, including the coincidence that Polson has just taken a job with a direct descendant of the Ross clan that tried to wipe the Ridges out long ago. I found the example of domestic abuse contrived and awkwardly inserted. In fact, I didn’t even believe that a single father who had raised two kids had no idea how to change a diaper.

Yet Nagle, like George Bernard Shaw, is a playwright of ideas, rather than an adroit plotter. Also like Shaw, she’s sometimes loath to let them go after one statement, so the play runs two and a half hours with an intermission. But her impassioned plunge into U.S. history and the cultural battles between European-Americans and native Americans — which still haven’t been resolved and probably never will be — hold our attention.

Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.