Theatre in Review: An Octoroon (Soho Rep)An Octoroon comes with such a controversial production back story that it gets referenced in its opening scene. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' play was originally scheduled to be produced at P.S. 122 in 2010, but things got squirrely on the way to opening night. The director departed 12 days before the opening, then a member of the cast sent an email denouncing the production. The latter made its way into a Village Voice blog, setting off a round of arguments, accusations, and general handwringing all over the Internet. At Soho Rep, An Octoroon begins with the actor Chris Myers impersonating both Jacobs-Jenkins, who is black, and his white female therapist, who, in her own condescending way, guides the blocked young writer toward adapting Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon for his next project. (He admits to being fascinated by both the play and its author.) But, as he tells us, his plans to do so went awry: "All the white guys quit. And then I couldn't find any more white guys to play any of the white guy parts, because they felt it was too 'melodramatic.'" A minute later, he says, "Just kidding. I don't have a therapist. I can't afford one. You people are my therapy." Well, forewarned is forearmed. As BJJ, as the character is known, puts on whiteface, he grumbles about actors who balk at appearance in his plays, adding, "'Black playwright.' I can't even wipe my ass without someone trying to accuse me of deconstructing the race problem in America." Which, of course, is exactly what he proceeds to do for the next two-and-a-quarter hours. A considerable amount of An Octoroon is taken from Boucicault's original, a barn-burning 1848 melodrama about race -- its subtitle is "Life in Louisiana" -- that was apparently second only to Uncle Tom's Cabin in its popular treatment of plantation life. The Dublin-born Boucicault was the 19th-century English-speaking theatre's premier play carpenter, producing one sturdily constructed potboiler after another. Most of them are forgotten today, although the comedy London Assurance still gets done from time to time and Manhattan's Irish Repertory Theatre has taken a flyer on such works as The Shaughraun and The Colleen Bawn, mining them for their considerable lodes of blarney. One might think that disinterring The Octoroon to examine its noxiously racial content would constitute the ultimate straw man hunt, but consider this: It was staged in New York as recently as 1961--by the esteemed Phoenix Theatre, no less -- in a production that apparently invited audiences to have a rip-roaring good time. Howard Thompson's New York Times review notes that the audience "began to laugh openly at the ripe lines: 'You are illegitimate but love knows no prejudice.' 'Work is the salt that gives savor to life.' 'Must we immolate our love on her prejudices?' 'I'd rather be black than ungrateful.'" If that last line doesn't give you pause, I can't imagine what would. As it happens, the further Jacobs-Jenkins strays from his source material, the better the results. There is plenty of prickly amusement in the prologue, in which BJJ vents his grievances, followed by Danny Wolohan, who, as Boucicault, puts on red makeup to play Wahnotee, the American Indian -- blacks aren't the only minority to get manhandled in The Octoroon -- and complains amusingly about his obscurity. After reminding us that he was an international success as a writer -- something he clearly feels he shouldn't have to do -- he adds, "I brought you people copyrights! And matinees! I invented matinees, bitches! Look it up! And everyone loves matinees!" The funniest scenes -- most of them calculated to set Boucicault spinning in his grave -- feature the slaves Dido and Minnie, who speak in a thoroughly contemporary idiom: Minnie: Can you believe that Massa Peyton's been dead for two months? Dido: I know, right? Seem like only yesterday. Minnie: You really think Mrs. Peyton's upstairs dying from heartbreak? Dido: No. That bitch is dying cuz she's old as hell. Minnie: I know, right? They also discuss the new master, George. Minnie asks, "Would you fuck him?" Dido, shocked, replies, "No, Minnie! Damn! Would you?" Minnie shrugs, adding, "But I kind of get the feeling you don't really get a say in the matter." At the same time, An Octoroon risks becoming a mishmash of styles and ideas. The original play is pretty lumbering stuff, and it isn't helped here by a cast that has apparently been instructed by the director, Sarah Benson, to put Brechtian quote marks around each line of dialogue. This is especially true of Zoë Winters, who plays the self-aggrandizing Southern belle Dora; her performance could come right out of the Carol Burnett spoof of Gone With the Wind, except that Burnett had better material. The same is true of the white actor Ben Horner, who, playing two different slaves, stretches Boucicault's version of Negro dialect to the limit. The only non-hoked-up character is Zoe, the octoroon, who has been raised as a kind of pet to the plantation's owners, now deceased, and who finds herself in love with George, the heir to the place. (George has just arrived from Paris and he doesn't know from plantations, especially one facing foreclosure.) As played by the light-skinned Amber Gray, she embodies the concept of the "tragic mulatto" -- an offensive stereotype that was still being purveyed as late as the 1960s in films like Imitation of Life -- and her refreshingly natural delivery adds a considerable sting to the considerable self-hatred with which her dialogue is freighted. For example, in order to save the plantation, George plans to marry Dora. But when Dora furiously realizes he is isn't in love with her, Zoe rushes to defend him: "Forgive him, Dora. You are right. He is incapable of any but sincere and pure feelings. You know you can't be jealous of a poor creature like me. He loves me -- but what of that? If he caught the fever, were stung by a snake, or possessed of any other poisonous or unclean thing, you could pity, tend, and love him through it, and for your gentle care he would love you in return. Well, is he not thus afflicted now? He loves an Octoroon." At moments like these, An Octoroon vividly demonstrates how appalling ideas can be buried in popular entertainments and left unchallenged. But too much of Jacobs-Jenkins' script consists of the grinding gears of Boucicault's dramaturgy, combined with bouts of analysis that aren't always as witty or penetrating as they aim to be. As the evening wears on, he seems to lose interest in his source material altogether, doing away with much of the second half. For practical reasons, he reduces the fourth-act sensation scene -- a sequence of spectacle and peril that was a regular feature of melodrama -- to a brief narrative recap; he also drops the ending, in which Zoe kills herself rather than marry George, for another dialogue between Dido and Minnie, followed by a group sing in total darkness. And then there's the giant rabbit, in a three-piece suit, who wanders through the action, doing not much of anything; he is apparently Br'er Rabbit, of folktale fame (and of Walt Disney's Song of the South, a film that I feel confident won't be rereleased anytime soon). He is played by the real (and unbilled) Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who doubles as Captain Ratts, the riverboat owner who bids in the play's slave auction sequence. I really can't explain any of this. It's around the time of Br'er Rabbit's first appearance that one begins to appreciate the bind that Jacobs-Jenkins -- admittedly a smart and a talented writer -- has put himself in. The Octoroon is probably too dull and offensive to be taken straight up, but the more Jacobs-Jenkins analyzes it, spoofs it, and takes it apart, the more he makes it seem marginal, not really worth our interest. The fact that the play has fallen out of recognition makes his job that much harder. In the last analysis, An Octoroon isn't really about race or an old-fashioned dramatic form; it's about Jacobs-Jenkins' ambivalent and contradictory responses to them, which ultimately aren't interesting enough to hold the production together. Even under these rather confused circumstances there are standout performances. Myers, who plays the villain M'Closky as well as BJJ and George, shuttles between the roles with élan; in a neat bit of staging by Benson he even takes part in a knife fight between George and M'Closky. Jocelyn Bioh and Marsha Stephanie Blake are pretty hilarious as Minnie and Dido. And Gray, playing it straight, makes the best possible case that there is still power in The Octoroon that time hasn't entirely obscured. The production starts out on a seemingly empty set, but the designer Mimi Lien has a couple of knockout coups de théâtre up her sleeve, which I will refrain from mentioning for fear of spoiling their shock value. Matt Frey's lighting is often quite beautiful, and he deploys such effects as strobes and color chases effectively as needed. Wade Laboissonniere's very fine costumes include cleverly caricatured ensembles for Dora and impressively detailed suits for George and Br'er Rabbit. Matt Tierney's sound design includes passages of hip-hop, opera arias, and, of all things, "Nadia's Theme." Jeff Sugg provides a terrifying projection of a lynching, which is used as the backdrop during a certain scene. Jacobs-Jenkins has clearly thought long and hard about his material and he does not lack for ideas, but he has so many of them that he has been unable to arrange them into any coherent pattern. An Octoroon has a number of hilarious and hair-raising moments, but for long stretches it seems to be spinning its wheels. If I were Boucicault, I'd be a little peeved, too.--David Barbour 
|
