Review: BOOTYCANDY Sizzles With Satire and Seethes With Inner Turmoil

Weird black mothers roam the Mint Museum stage at the Actor's Theatre of Charlotte's latest migratory production. One mamma refers to her son's genitalia as bootycandy, while another mamma actually names her daughter Genitalia. The weirdness of Robert O'Hara's BOOTYCANDY only begins there, for I don't think either of these mothers - or their children - ever meet, though the bootycandy boy emerges as our antihero, Sutter. Presumably, this mildly sadistic gay man was messed up by his mom.

Perhaps all of the above have fallen under the influence under the flamboyant influence of Reverend Benson who strides to his pulpit in priestly black robes and exits in a flaming red formal dress and white high-heeled shoes. Or perhaps none of the others knows him, because Rev. Benson preaches directly to us, not at all happy about the intolerance and homophobia we're spreading around the neighborhood.

Late in Act 1, we get a delightfully specious explanation for all this disconnection. The only white person in the cast seats himself on a chair upstage, seemingly prepared to lead a group therapy session. No, he is actually moderating a symposium where three of the four black cast members have gathered - excluding Sutter. After their previous trashy or swishy turns, they are now the three different playwrights who have written all the action we've seen so far. Sophisticated, intellectual, and artsy, they give the Moderator a really hard time.

That veiled hostility toWard White people is the underbelly of what mostly seems to be a sharply satirical look at black folk. Mostly we're looking at hilarious set pieces. Friends try to dissuade Genitalia's expectant mom from committing her folly while gossiping lustily about it. Or years later, we see Sutter's mom absolutely putting her foot down on his participation in a sissy high school musical, insisting that he take up a sport while his disengaged stepdad mostly buries himself behind a newspaper.

And of course, the remedy for somebody repeatedly stalking Sutter on the way home from the library isn't to call the cops - it's to stop reading those damn Jackie Collins books. The Michael Jackson Thriller jacket continues to fly under Mom's radar.

More bizarre and surreal is the grownup Genitalia, in a white bridal gown, un- or dis-marrying Intifada in a formal ceremony, complete with increasingly antagonistic vows, ending with bitch slaps from both lesbians. So when Sutter and his boyfriend Larry agree on an assignation with a lonely white guy, what could go wrong?

Kevin Aoussou, who has played a variety of dark roles for Shakespeare Carolina, including DorIan Gray a couple of years ago, mixes it up a little bit more for us here as Sutter. He's in much lighter scenes now as the younger Sutter, subjected to the bootycandy and compulsory sports indignities inflicted upon him by his mom, more vulnerable and less arrogant. He's also capable of insight and regret here, delivering a more fully rounded portrayal here than we've seen from him before.

Yet the show largely belongs to Jeremy DeCarlos from the moment he tosses off Reverend Benson's black robes and applies his lipstick. Equally satisfying after his low-key and sympathetic episodes as Step Dad and Larry (the boyfriend), he reappears as Old Granny at an old age home, where she serves up solace to Sutter (and flashbacks for us) when he visits her. All this wisdom and warm reminiscence are bartered for contraband edible eats.

Lydia Williamson and Ericka Ross sinuously intertwine throughout the two-hour evening as mothers, daughters, and playwrights. As the immature mom insisting on naming her daughter Genitalia and later as the more butch daughter Intifada, Williamson certainly lays down a credible case for being the more incorrigible of the two. But while Ross is purposely overmatched as Genitalia, her insensitivity and homophobia as Sutter's mom are as chilling as they are hilarious.

Directing the show, Martin Damien Wilkins gives all his black performers license to take it far enough over-the-top to remind us occasionally of The Colored Museum, George C. Wolfe's hilarious 1986 subversion of honored black theatre traditions. Relying primarily on projections, set designer Chip Decker comes fairly close to convincing us that The Mint is Actor's Theatre's permanent home. Certainly the acoustics here are far more hospitable than the disastrous holiday sojourn at Charlotte Ballet's McBride-Bonnefoux studio for The Great American Trailer Park Christmas Musical.

Maybe the niftiest touch from Wilkins, restoring some of the distance between Colored Museum and this 2011 satire, is the consistently natural work he calls forth from Chaz Pofahl in five different roles. Except as the fulsome officiator at the Genitalia-Intifada breakup, Pofahl is consistently life-sized and somewhat pitiful as our white guy - even when he turns up as the pervert stalking the teen-aged Sutter from the library. Instead of shocking me as Sutter and Larry's victim later on, when he came out to the hallway outside his hotel room completely naked, he broke my heart a little bit.

Arguably, he's the only player who bares body or soul all evening long.

Wild as it is, BOOTYCANDY is an autobiographical piece by a black gay playwright with an incongruously Irish name. A portion of O'Hara's animus is directed intellectually toward his own black community, and another more visceral portion is directed reflexively toWard White people. Most poignant of all is the remaining scrutiny that O'Hara directs toward himself and his own shortcomings.

Photo by Ramsey Lyric

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