Review Roundup: BOOTYCANDY Opens at Playwrights Horizons

BOOTYCANDY, a new play written and directed by Robert O'Hara, is being presented in its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater (416 West 42nd Street). Opening night is tonight, September 10, 2014.

The cast features Phillip James Brannon, three-time Helen Hayes Award nominee Jessica Frances Dukes, Jesse Pennington, Audelco Award winner Benja Kay Thomas and Lance Coadie Williams.

Sutter (Brannon) is on an outrageous odyssey through his childhood home, his church, dive bars, motel rooms and even nursing homes. A kaleidoscope of sketches that interconnect to portray growing up gay and black, Robert O'Hara's subversive, uproarious satire crashes headlong into the murky terrain of pain and pleasure and... Bootycandy.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: "Bootycandy"...kicks off the season at Playwrights Horizons, where it opened on Wednesday night, with a big, bold bang, underscoring this theater's reputation as one of the city's more adventurous incubators of daring playwriting. As raw in its language and raucous in spirit as it is smart and provocative, the play depicts the life of a black gay man in a series of scenes that range widely in style. Many fly wildly into the realm of the absurd, while others are naturalistic pictures of Sutter's life as he comes to terms with his sexuality and the damage his culture's attitude toward it may have inflicted on his psyche.

Linda Winer, Newsday: More accurately, this is a grab-bag of comic scenes, some more satirical than others, all directed by the playwright with an original eye for design and a gleeful spin on black caricatures. At its best, which is very good, indeed, the evening suggests the subversive, take-no-prisoners wit of George C. Wolfe's 1986 breakthrough play, "The Colored Museum." Other times, we're in mainstream Tyler Perry territory, except with gay sex and dirty talk.

Matt Windman, AM New York: You'll have to see the show to learn what body part "Bootycandy," the peculiar, slang-style title of Robert O'Hara's satirical and offbeat five-actor play, is a codeword for. It's actually a surprise. However, I can tell you that the show, which serves as the season opener for Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons, is an uneven, messy but often hilarious ride throughout the imagination and memories of a gay African-American male...Nevertheless, the exaggerated personality that O'Hara and his cast offer is refreshing and unruly enough to make checking this out worthwhile.

Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly: Robert O'Hara's Bootycandy, a series of sketches on the theme of being black and gay in modern America, plays like a particularly subversive episode of Saturday Night Live. The show...is often laugh-out-loud funny, with a cutting satiric edge that recalls George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum...But like many a SNL episode, even the best sketches tend to drag on just a little too long. O'Hara is a talented writer with a rapier wit, but his direction vacillates between spot-on and slightly too broad. One wishes that he had employed a director who could have helped him hone his fine material into a tighter, sharper edge. Another director might have also advised him against a second act gear-shift that comes out of nowhere and grinds both the comedy and the social commentary to a halt.

Jesse Green, Vulture: Bootycandy is basically a spiritual autobiography through satire, loosely tracking the life of a gay black boy named Sutter from childhood through professional success as a playwright. But instead of offering naturalistic scenes that dramatize meaningful steps on Sutter's path, O'Hara gives us a collection of skits that play like a chitlin circuit Hee-Haw...But in the end neither the satire nor the straight-up drama is allowed a chance to thrive; I couldn't help feeling that this was an unconscious strategy to repel criticism of either, in the same way that some animals evolve ingenious anti-predator adaptations to make themselves inedible. Or perhaps it was deliberate...it seems to me that Bootycandy is at its considerable best when we have no idea what it's trying to do, and don't feel bullied to find out.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: Built to make you wince and laugh, the bold but uneven "Bootycandy" wastes no time in doing both...Fortunately, writer and director Robert O'Hara doesn't sanitize or scrub his satire one bit. The show is delectably un-PC and potty-mouthed. It's also performed to perfection by a cast of five that's game for anything...As with any show made up of vignettes, some don't work as well as others...Pruning could have made a tastier and tighter "Bootycandy."

Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post: But mostly, "Bootycandy" is a raucous romp that had the audience at a recent performance hooting and laughing throughout. The show's biggest problem is its pacing, or lack thereof. Some of the vignettes are based on one joke that goes on way too long...O'Hara tries to shake things up by breaking the fourth wall. There's a fake theater panel discussing what we've just seen, and toward the end the actors revolt and question Sutter/the author's motives in writing his plays. This does feel a little gimmicky, but not enough to spoil the good will the show creates. And you may never think of the words "booty" and "candy" the same way ever again.

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Photo Credit: Joan Marcus