“Pleasure and pain are impossible to separate” is the tag line for Bootycandy by John O’Hara. It’s a play about Black/Queer identity and it’s currently playing at Buddies in Bad Times in a co-production with Obsidian Theatre. It’s complex, episodic, impressionistic, very funny and quite filthy. The notes by director Jay Northcott can basically be summarised as “Go with the flow and be open to what’s happening around you”. It’s great advice. Trying to find a linear narrative or “meaning” in Bootycandy is just a recipe for frustration.

That said, there’s a thread running through it. That thread is Sutter; a young, queer, black man that we meet as a child and as an adult. He’s played by Kyle Brown. Around him is a super versatile cast consisting of Helen Belay, Meghan Swaby, Christopher Allen and Dan Mousseau; all of them play multiple characters ranging from a minister to a drunk white guy to Sutter’s mother, grandmother and stepfather and many more. I think the stage set up is important too. The action takes place between two banks of bleachers as if the audience are supporters of rival teams. There’s plenty of fourth wall breaking and this seems designed to draw the audience even further in.

I think I should just describe a few scenes I found particularly memorable; anything more would be tedious overload. There’s Christopher Allen, in full canonicals, admonishing his. congregation for sending him anonymous notes about some of the choirboys. Lacing his tirade with fake scripture he gradually removes his robes to reveal a sparkly red dress and a Holy Bible purse. There’s a hilarious divorce ceremony where Helen Belay and Meghan Swaby promise to break off their relationship while Dan Mousseau reads them their vows of perpetual hatred and disrespect.

And there’s what i suppose is the pivotal scene, if something this non-linear can have a pivot. It’s a game of “truth or dare” in a bar featuring Mousseau as a very drunk, straight, white guy who wants to experience sex with a man and Sutter and his partner (Allen) who happen to be in the bar. This is really where the pleasure and pain thing works out. Sutter is playing along because he wants to humiliate a white guy, but the white guy wants to be humiliated which is why his dick ends up on the table. Mercifully whatever happens with the big black dildo happens off-stage. Sutter’s exposition of how more oral sex could eclipse war got the biggest cheer of the night! Moral of the story… “we could just play bootycandy games instead of making wars and stuff”.

So there you have it; a chaotic, funny, filthy romp about dick and what it takes to be human. Only at Buddies in Bad Times! Bootycandy continues until October 17th.

Photo credits: Roya DelSol