Current best of show! ‘Booty Candy’ ‘The Wayside Motor Inn’

Brazen is likely too gentle a description for the hi- and lo- jinks that had this critic weeping tears of laughter at the Playwrights Horizons’ current production of Robert O’Hara’s audacious, delicious “Booty Candy.” In this five-character satire, told on a purposely narrow stage bursting with the talents of Phillip James Brannon, Jessica Frances Dukes, Jesse Pennington, Benja Kay Thomas and Lance Coadie Williams — this unforgettable quintet takes on multiple roles to unfold the cautionary tale of the tribulations of a young black youth who prefers books to throwing a ball — and boys to girls.
How will growing up in an opinionated household with a tough black mamma determined — in a culture turned off to homosexuality — that her boy will use his “booty candy” as she envisions in his adult life? A series of scurrilous vignettes on that purpose are set in locales as varied as a church sermon where the pastor, ranting against sexual deviants turns out to share their genes as he eventually (and literally) reveals his true nature! And in a tussle between four women (all played by the duo of Ms. Dukes and Ms.Thomas), who at one point duel as, respectively, the satirically named Intifada and Genitalia, prove there are no boundaries playwright O’Hara’s humor will not explode. The ladies also have the dubious distinction of a final scene where lesbian wives get entangled in a factious “uncommitment” ceremony that leaves good taste by the wayside.
The role of Sutter, the gentle youth who in his adolescence dons a Michael Jackson silver glove, hangs out in the library and finds his escape from his haranguing family in Jackie Collins novels is played by Brannon with a winning, heart-wrenching combination of early naïveté — replaced by eventual rebellion against the strictures his homeboy world have pitted against his nature. But right up to “Booty Candy’s” finale O’Hara makes it clear, as Sutter sneaks in a visit to his now nursing home-bound old grandma to deliver some goodies, that the playwright’s creation epitomizes the truism that sometimes bad things happen to good people; And that the fault is not in themselves, but in a narrow-minded populace.