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“This is a waterlogged play;
all of the water is real,” a note at the start of the script for Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s “shadow/land” declares. I like that emphatic, underlined “all,” which insists that, in the realm of theatrical artifice, some things should simply be themselves. And I especially like knowing that the water is meant to be there, because, for the moment, it isn’t. “shadow/land,” which is set during the five late-summer days when Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, is a play crying out for a stage. Until one can safely be provided, the Public Theatre has stepped in with a topnotch audio production, directed by Candis C. Jones, and listeners will have to picture for themselves the lashing rain and the brackish floodwater that rushes in after the levees burst. A storm has a sound. Here, it is sound itself, represented by a trombone’s cat howl and a frantic clatter of drums as the musical city comes undone. But floodwater rises with annihilati