“Saviour Samuel” at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company

The Pittsburgh Tatler: Set on the Kansas prairie in the late 19thcentury, Mark Clayton Southers’ Saviour Samuel might best be described as an African-American version of Little House on the Prairie – with a supernatural twist.

Like Little House, the play focuses on a family that has moved west to settle in the aftermath of the Civil War. Benjamin Clayson (Wali Jamal), his wife Virginia (Cheryl El-Walker), and their deaf teen-aged daughter Essie (Aaliyah Sanders) are struggling homesteaders on a remote piece of land, where Ben hunts and traps to put food on the table and makes a living distilling and selling moonshine to the local “Injuns.”