The Ocean We Swim In — Cannon Street

A new Charleston play is doing something trickier than just telling a good story. It is using a suspense plot about an art critic, a local legend, and an old secret to ask who gets remembered, who gets erased, and who gets to control the story afterward. That is the engine inside *The Ocean We Swim In*, now in its world-premiere run from PURE Theatre at the Cannon Street Arts Center through May 9. The setup sounds intimate, but the stakes are bigger than one marriage or one scandal — it is really about history, reputation, and the temptation to turn both into weapons. ### What is the play actually about? At the center is Jack, a recently canceled California art critic who retreats to the South Carolina Lowcountry with his husband, Dylan. In exile, Jack finds what looks like a path back to relevance: expose a beloved local artist, Tommy Maybank Legare, just before the man’s 100th birthday. But the deeper Jack digs, the less clean the story becomes. With buried history, and Jack’s own motives. ### Why does the art-critic angle matter? Because Erickson is not just writing about art. He is writing about the machinery around art — critics, gatekeepers, prestige, public shame. Jack is not a neutral truth-seeker. He is someone whose own standing has collapsed, so every discovery comes with mixed motives attached. That makes the play less like a history lesson and more like a fight again. ### Who is Tommy Maybank Legare supposed to be? Not a simple villain, basically. The production describes him as a revered local figure whose legacy may rest on racism, appropriation, secrecy, or some tangled combination of all three. The catch is that the play keeps complicating the accusation. Charleston City Paper’s review points to exactly that tension — truth here is not clean, and neither are the people handling it. ### Why set this in the Lowcountry? Because the Lowcountry is not just scenery here. Marshes, old families, buried archives, and inherited silences all fit the play’s central idea — that the past does not stay buried just because people agree not to name it. PURE says the story moves between present-day Lowcountry and post-World War II Pawleys Island, which gives the drama a long historical echo instead of a single contemporary scandal. ### Is this based on real history? Not as a straight biography, but it is clearly drawing from local cultural history. PURE has framed the play as being inspired by two now-forgotten Lowcountry artists. That matters because the piece is not only inventing a mystery — it is also poking at a real regional pattern, where some artists become legends and others disappear from the record. ### Who made this production? Brad Erickson wrote it, and Sharon Graci directs. The cast includes Michael Smallwood, Andrew Puckett, Joy Vandervort-Cobb, and R.W. Smith. It is also a new play developed in the PURE Lab, which helps explain why the production feels built around discovery rather than revival — this is a first outing, not a polished museum piece. ### Why is this landing now? Because it hits a live nerve. We are in a moment when people argue constantly about cancellation, historical accountability, cultural theft, and whether exposing an ugly truth is justice or just another performance of power. This play folds all of that into a local story with a human scale. That makes it feel less like a lecture and more like a trap closing around everyone in it. ### Bottom line What makes *The Ocean We Swim In* interesting is not just that it uncovers a secret. It asks what happens after the secret surfaces — who gets redeemed, who gets sacrificed, and whether truth can heal anything once ambition gets mixed in. That is a much sharper question than a simple whodunit, and it is why this world premiere feels like more than a local arts listing.