Review: The Black Theatre Troupe Presents Robert O'Hara's BARBECUE

BroadwayWorld/Phoenix is again delighted to welcome David Appleford as a guest contributor to its pages ~ as always, featuring his distinctive, well-balanced, and intelligent perspective on theatre. In this case, he shines the light on The Black Theatre Troupe's production of Robert O'Hara's BARBECUE.

Here now ~ From the keyboard of David Appleford:

Satirist, playwright, and director Robert O'Hara is often praised for audacious ideas and themes that can often prove entertainingly challenging, and certainly jolting. For some, there may be content in an O'Hara play that could even alter a personal cultural perspective, if only for a moment.

In the new regional production of O'Hara's 2015 dark comic look at two volatile family sibling get-togethers, BARBECUE, directed by Ron May and now in performance at The Black Theatre Troupe in Phoenix until November 6, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the first of the two families we see setting up the balloons and lighting the grill had just walked off the set of Showtime's Shameless.

Looking and sounding like several of the white trailer park families who during the Morton Downey Jr. or Jerry Springer days of daytime TV unashamedly aired their grievances while the host intervened and attempted to get everyone to pull together before the program's end, this BARBECUE family does the same. They squabble, they shout, they accuse and scream, and on one occasion in a startling moment of physical violence, they even use a taser to quieten a family member, Marie (Debra K. Stevens), whose whining won't quit.

When chief organizer of this gathering, Lillie Anne (Katie McFadzen) asks her brother, James T (Louis Farber) for some help, he responds with his usual verbal aggression, "I been tellin' you for the last month that I didn't want to be here today, and I'm not planning to help do nuthin'." After five minutes of this terse, in-your-face, style of delivery that each family member unleashes on each other, you can't help wondering, do these people always talk and act in this unceasingly confrontational manner, or is it a re-enactment of what they've seen on TV for years and now think this is the way normal people talk and behave?

On the surface, BARBECUE appears to be a play about a family attempting to force a sister whose drug-addled behavior is way beyond anyone's control. Her name is Barbara (Megan Holcomb) though the family calls her Zippity Boom because, as James T explains, complete with sound effects, "When she tastes liquor, she go Zippity. Boom!" As far as the family is concerned, Zippity needs rehab, and they are going to make her listen, no matter what, even if it means tying her to a tree and keeping her there, bound and gagged, while each of the siblings speaks their mind. The irony, of course, is that while demanding Zippity's sobriety, each family member is conveniently ignoring his or her own alcohol, weed, crack, and, in the case of Adlean (Debra Lyman, who has perfected the art of having a cigarette hang permanently from the corner of the mouth), a pill-popping, chain-smoking habit.

Then something odd happens. At the end of scene one, house lights fade. When they return, the picnic table is still there, and so is the dysfunctional family. But things are different. The characters you see laying out the cloths on the picnic tables or flipping burgers on the grill all have the same names as those seen before. They're wearing the same costumes, and while they don't physically resemble those we saw at the beginning of the play, they deliver their dialog with the same accents and with the same aggressive phrasing. It's definitely the same family. Just one thing: this time they are all now played by black actors. Lydia Corbin, Dayna Donovan, Ryan L. Jenkins, Michael Thompson, and, as Zippity Boom, Shonda Royall.

It's as if we entered some kind of parallel, theatrical existence that's not quite making sense. At least, not yet. And whatever you thought the play was about in that first scene is now thrown out of the window. Everything, including what you thought playwright O'Hara might be going for, needs to be re-evaluated, particularly as the characters, now black, are continuing their conversation as if no break between scenes had ever occurred. What does occur, however, is our response to it.

From a white audience perspective, with attitudes and beliefs seen through the prism of rules established by white institutions, the first family we see is clearly what many might label as white trailer park trash. But when the characters who talk and act the same with the same linguistic rhythms as the white family but are now black, what do we call them? Black trash? That doesn't work. In a sharp and clever turn-around, O'Hara is suddenly presenting something that may have initially appeared as opposite equivalents, but they're not.

As with previous plays, O'Hara successfully alternates between laugh-out-loud comedy and drama. He also plays with time and a myriad of themes that may or may not strike a chord with audiences, particularly if you're not quite sure where things are heading. In BARBECUE, there are so many unexpected turns and jaw-dropping surprises in its narrative, that to spell them out in a review is to cause a major injustice. There's a moment seconds before intermission that will leave you in stunned silence. And like that initial earlier surprise of seeing the same white characters portrayed by black actors, the surprises of the second act take you deeper down the rabbit hole, stimulating a change to whatever you originally thought BARBECUE was trying to say.

Challenging an audience's perception in matters of race, BARBECUE incorporates not only the more obvious elements of a person's awareness of the subject, but how those daytime TV shows, movies, and the media in general mold attitudes that can often have no bearing on reality. In a telling moment, when Black Zippity explains in the second act that when you're a black movie star singer who is globally famous, race takes a running nose dive over a cliff. You're no longer a black movie star singer, you're simply a movie star singer, or "Sanga," as she pronounces it, often falling into a Madonna-like temporary English accent for no obvious reason.

There's plenty to discover and discuss in O'Hara's smart script, but at the heart of it all is the play's colorful, vibrant, confrontational dialog and its use of language. Language is always the essential clue to any writer's character. In BARBECUE, the linguistic style of the family refutes conventional rhythms and, like a David Mamet script, is only effective if delivered precisely as written without an actor injecting his or her personal pauses just because they think it feels right. Doing so only deviates from the intended rhythm.

Set against Sarah Harris' extremely effective set design of a public park's picnic area, and Carol Simmons' costume, hair, and makeup design that makes each character on stage as authentic as the play demands, Ron May's pitch-perfect cast - no weak link - fully embraces the language, and with no disruption to the intentional rhythms of the lines, for two hours including intermission, they expertly surf the waves of O'Hara's written words. This is a richly intelligent play and a great Black Theatre Troupe production.

The Black Theatre Troupe ~ The Helen K. Mason Performing Arts Center ~ 1333 E Washington St, Phoenix, AZ ~ https://www.blacktheatretroupe.org/ ~ 602-258-8128

Graphic credit to TBTT

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