Review: BOOTY CANDY at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre

What springs to mind when you hear the phrase, Booty Candy? Whatever image it conjures up, it’s probably not exactly the definition we get in gay African-American playwright Robert O’Hara’s award-winning 2011 play of that name. This co-production between Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Obsidian Theatre (Jay Northcott, director) picks up what O’Hara is putting down - a balanced blend of bawdy humour, incisive commentary on race and sexuality in America, and relatable content about foibles and follies.

The cast features 4 Black performers and a token white guy reminiscent of Jim Carrey’s breakthrough role on In Living Colour (Keenan Wayans, 1990). The play is in that show's sketch comedy tradition as well, but decidedly more smutty and more unabashedly critical.

Scenes ranging from a fabulous coming-out sermon to hot goss about wildly inappropriate baby names, taboo encounters of a downlow kind and muggings appear at first whimsically unconnected. As the scenes unfold, it becomes clear they are thematically unified and narratively connected by the early adolescence-to-middle-adulthood journey of the semi-autobiographical character Sutter.

The performance I saw was a preview, and in the first scenes it felt like the performers were still trying on their dialects for size. But things picked up quickly, and I was soon caught up in the drama and laughing out loud to the outrageous dialogue.

I literally found myself calling out “yass Queen” during Christopher Allen’s testifying monologue as the sparkly gender fluid reverend. With infinite grace and style, he also brought home the play's themes on the hidden parts of our Black communities and who gets to be counted among God’s children.

I felt like I was in the group call during Helen Belay and Meghan Swaby’s vintage curly phone cord duet; it was so relatable. Surely we have all stood by in helpless, bemused horror, watching a gumption-deficient person in our lives make a stultifyingly bad decision? The comedic timing was on point, and I was delighted by Helen Belay's ability to seamlessly flit between being the pregnant fool and the gobsmacked friend. 

Dan Mousseau was quite the charmer in the part of the token white guy. As Carrey must have learned in the 90s, it’s hard to thread the needle as the foil for much of the racial humour without being offensive. He managed to play the part with connection, vulnerability and playfulness at the centre, bringing the common humanity of the racial divide to the surface.

Kyle Brown has the heavy task of tying the whole thing together in the role of Sutter. He did an outstanding job of finding a clear and consistent voice and physicality for this character across different ages and stages. Clearly communicating the throughline of Sutter’s boldly queer Black hero's journey is vital to the work's cohesion and meaning, and his embodiment of the role was powerful.

While the performances and the content were the main attractions for me, it would be inaccurate to put lighting and set design in a corner. The show features some very cool stagecraft, leveraging different levels and two fourth walls in the intimate space.

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