10th Play - 7/10/23 - Barbecue by Robert O'Hara

When I stumbled upon a Robert O’Hara script, I grabbed it and put it in my electronic library. He’s amazing and I was very excited to read this one!

Summary: "A modern American family uses a summer barbecue as a pretext to ambush sister Barbara with an intervention. If you think ‘all families are crazy’ is just a cliche, you’ve not spent time under the influence of the O'Mallerys. An afternoon in the park with these raucous siblings and you'll be challenging your own assumptions about family, race, and reality… Barbecue by Obie and Helen Hayes Award winner Robert O’Hara will have you laughing out loud and questioning how it’s true that in America, you sometimes taze the ones you love." (Steppenwolf Theatre)

Loved: Oh my god - Robert O'Hara does not disappoint! One of the best plays I have literally ever seen EVER was his Insurrection: Holding History done by Stage Left Theatre. Hysterical, devasting ... all of the things. And surprising. Barbecue definitely is surprising (REALLY SURPRISING!) and funny, of course, and thought-provoking. To be honest, I wasn't that excited by the beginning of the play - a man, James T., spewing invective on the phone about all the members of his family. However, as we go further into the play, it's revealed that one of the family members is planning the barbecue to stage an intervention for their drug-addled sister, nicknamed “Zippity-Boo” - love that nickname! Then all of a sudden the first scene ends, and the second scene has all the same characters, but *** SPOILER *** instead of White actors, the characters are all replaced by Black actors. We don't understand it, but it definitely gets our attention! When James T reveals that he has brought a taser to help with the intervention, not to mention rope and duct tape, it starts to get even more interesting. We get another scene with the white cast, where it is revealed that sister Lillie Anne has booked a stay at a rehab center for sister Barbara (aka Zippity-Boo) in Alaska, complete with yoga and horses, which is hysterical to the family as well as the audience, since we can't imagine any of these whacked out, seemingly lower class characters doing anything so still as yoga or as "upper class" as horseback riding. The next scene is the intervention with Barbara literally tied to a post and with her mouth duct taped. Hilarious! And … awful. At the end of that scene, all of a sudden it is revealed … *** MORE SPOILERS *** that we're on a movie set!!! and the Black actors are actually portraying the white characters (who are real). *** MORE SPOILERS *** The second act is a meeting between Black Barbara and White Barbara - Black Barbara is a famous movie star, and the story is White Barbara's that Black Barbara is planning to buy and turn into a movie in which she will star (so she can get her Oscar!). The conversation between Black and White Barbara is hysterical and pokes at the power of fame in our culture, as well as MANY other things. More surprises follow and I was wide-eyed and laughing, if sometimes uncomfortably, until the very end. I loved the ending of the play, after that scene - I thought it was hysterical and pulled the whole thing together well, although I did read a review that felt that the ending was a little overkill. Differing opinions, and of course, I only read it and that person actually watched a production. SO FUNNY - I MUST see this play one day!!

What I didn’t Love: I really did not love the horrible way everyone in the family treated each other, insulting each other and bringing up everyone's faults (which were pretty major). I did not enjoy spending time with this family, although I totally understand why they are written this way - it makes sense in terms of some of the plot details revealed in Act II, as well as pokes at the American family. Hopefully most families aren't this horrible to each other, but, alas, some are. I also didn't love the dialect the play is written in, although again, it makes sense given the plot twists. It definitely places the family in a lower class, although I feel like all classes have horrible family problems. Did the family have to be lower class? Maybe. But the idea of hearing that same dialect from both White and Black actors is interesting, so I might have really enjoyed that in watching the play vs. reading it. I mentioned in my comments from an earlier play (The Virtuous Fall of Our Lady of Sorrows) that the dialect might sound like White actors were making fun of more marginalized cultures, and that Black actors might feel like they're playing stereotypes. This idea is definitely an issue here, but as the playwright is a Black man and the piece is OBVIOUSLY focused on race, I don't think it's as problematic. I definitely won't use scenes from it though, unfortunately. Well, maybe the final scene with the two Barbaras...

Overall: Overall, I LOVED this play once the plot twists started happening, about 10 pages in. Robert O'Hara delivers again, and brilliantly. Living with the family in the play is tough, as they are all pretty awful to each other, but this makes sense in the larger scheme of things. One surprise after another, and utterly hysterical. Some of the laughs are uncomfortable ones, which is exactly as the playwright intended. I'd love to be a part of this show in any way, and REALLY want to see it!!!

Here’s a link to Google Sheets with more info about the play: Play a Day Sheet