SpeakEasy Stage Company Presents The New England Premiere of "Booty Candy" by Robert O'Hara - Bold and Brutally Honest

Be forewarned - "Booty Candy," the current SpeakEasy Stage Company production, is not for the faint of heart or for the sexually squeamish.  The play contains full frontal male nudity and sexual topics and language galore.  Playwright Robert O'Hara tackles complex issues of sexuality and human connection from his perspective as a gay African-American.  This play began as a series of unrelated vignettes, drawn from O'Hara's personal experiences and observations of others.  He uses humor, sarcasm, parody and reductio ad absurdum to point a harsh spotlight on issues of sexuality as he perceives them impacting the Black experience.  Several years ago, someone suggested to the playwright that his vignettes all shared a common theme, and they should be mounted as a single play.  In a sense, it seems as if over time Mr. O'Hara had crafted colorful fabric squares from the remnants of his memory and placed these squares in a box.  Then he realized that these fabric square could be stitched together into a crazy quilt.

The threads that stitch these vignettes together into a quilt are threefold in the themes that unite the stories:

• Delight in obliterating familiar labels and categories;
• Choking on inappropriately applied misconceptions about individuals and groups;
• The universal hunger expressed by the character Clint in one of the Second Act vignettes: "I just want to fell Human.  Contact.  Just for a moment."

These themes are expressed in a wide variety of ways as the vignettes are revealed.  A Black preacher, Rev. Benson (Johnny Lee Davenport), outs himself during a sermon.  In another sketch, two married and committed lesbians go through a ceremony of "De-Commitment."  The playwright seems to be asking, "If we can celebrate gay marriage, can we also learn to embrace gay divorce?" 

The one character who appears regularly in the majority of the vignettes is Sutter (Maurice Emmanuel Parent). In that sense Sutter is also a uniting thread that holds the quilt together. We first meet him as an awkward boy being given hygiene instructions by his mother. "Make sure you wash your booty candy" - her pet name for his penis.  In a follow-on vignette, we see him trying to engage his family members as he reveals that he is being stalked by an older man.  They are too wrapped up in their own worlds and limited perceptions to relate to him in any meaningful way. Instead, they begin to list "masculine" activities he should begin to engage in to be perceived as less of a sissy.  In a climactic scene quoted above, Sutter and another gay man pick up a straight white man in a bar and go back to the man's hotel room for "fun and humiliation."  Things turn very dark and tragic.

Family Dinner
Johnny Lee Davenport, Jackie Davis
Tiffany Nichole Greene, Maurice Emmanuel Parent
"Booty Candy"
by Robert O'Hara
SpeakEasy Stage Company
Calderwood Pavilion
Through April 9th
Photo by Glenn Perry Photography

In one of the most interesting vignettes, all five actors are on stage.  A White moderator (John Kuntz) is interviewing a panel of four Black playwrights (Johnny Lee Davenport, Jackie Davis, Tiffany Nichole Greene, Maurice Emmanuel Parent). The playwright uses this situation to poke fun at a wide variety of stereotypes that White people have about Black people in general, and Black playwrights in particular.  It is hilarious and disturbing, because it hits home so successfully.

Director Summer Williams pulls these five fine actors together in kaleidoscopic combinations, each of which throws a different light on the broad issues being addressed by Mr. O'Hara.  I was particularly interested in the diverse reactions on the part of members of the very heterogeneous audience.  I observed a mix of Black and White, young and old, gay and straight.  There was considerable interaction with the audience, as one would expect in a Black Gospel church service.  I heard other members of the audience proclaim during intermission: "I don't know what they are talking about.  I don't know this vocabulary." Fair enough. Mr. O'Hara's vocabulary - linguistic and visual - can be jarring and unfamiliar.  But it demands a response. There is no way to walk away from this play unaffected by what one has experienced.  For some, the result is confusion.  For others, disgust.  For still others, a commitment to continue pondering the ramifications of what has been presented.

Johnny Lee Davenport as Larry
John Kuntz as Clint
Maurice Emmanuel Parent as Sutter
"Booty Candy"
by Robert O'Hara
SpeakEasy Stage Company
Calderwood Pavilion 
Through April 9th
Photo by Glenn Perry Photography

Scenic Designer Jenna McFarland Lord has created a versatile and visually arresting set that allows the action to move from the 1970s to present day.  Costumes by Amanda Mujica suggest that same flow from the '70s to this decade.  Lighting by Jen Rock and Sound by David Wilson set a variety of moods and tones as the action morphs from one discrete vignette to another.T

This play causes quite a sensation when it ran in New York City in 2014.  I expect that there will be a similar buzz about this production.  It is worthy or our consideration and discussion.

Fasten your seat belt, and go along for a ride that has twists and turns and G-forces that will rock your world.  In other words - impactful theater.

Link to Tickets

Enjoy!

Al