Branden Jacobs-Jenkins launches an all-out farcical attack on America’s history of slavery in An Octoroon, now in its West Coast premiere in an outdoor production at the Fountain Theater, directed by Judith Moreland.
The African-American playwright credits Dion Boucicault’s 1859 melodrama The Octoroon as his inspiration, though he lampoons it from start to finish in his rude, jeering, irreverent adaptation. Boucicault won fame and fortune with The Octoroon, which depicted a Southern slave-owner falling in love with a beautiful young girl who turns out to be one-eighth black. To marry her would be a violation of the law against miscegenation, but the slave-owner daringly follows the dictates of his heart, even as he lords it over the “pure” black folk on his Louisiana cotton plantation.
Jacobs-Jenkins rips into the twisted mentality of the racial laws that were the order of the day with fiendish glee and derision. He mocks everything about ante-bellum life: the idealized portrait of white Southern womanhood, the supposed kindly treatment of the slaves, the near-religious belief in white supremacy. He also uses all the tools of deconstruction — anachronistic language and characters (rap songs, a disco slave auction, the sudden introduction of a two-legged fox) — to aid in his assault on the madness and horror of slavery, American style.
There are flashes of brilliant satirical scenes in An Octoroon, times when the comic action makes you laugh out loud. Trouble is, the humor is mostly one-note, and when it is repeated over a 2 ½ hour stretch, it loses power and punch. Piling nonsense upon nonsense simply becomes trying; how much better and funnier the show would be at half the length!
Still, there is much to commend about the play, beginning with the performances. Matthew Hancock excels as the narrator and protagonist, a 21st-century Black playwright who, with the help of white makeup, goes back in time and transforms himself into a plantation owner. Rob Nagle is equally impressive in his dual roles as a drunken Indian chief and obnoxious slave auctioneer. Vanessa Claire Stewart is a hoot as a fan-fluttering, hoop-skirted Southern belle, as is Kacie Rogers as the black slave, Dido.
Mara Klein registers as the demure, innocent Zoe (the octoroon), as do Leea Ayers and Pam Trotter as trash-talking house slaves.
Scenically, An Octoroon unfolds on Frederica Nascimento’s tubular, black-and-white set on whose backdrop images of racist animated cartoons, coon shows, and dance sequences are projected. The most devastating image is the photograph of an actual lynching, the sight of a black man hanging from a tree somewhere in the South. It reminds us that while An Octoroon mostly pokes fun at it, slavery’s existence was all too painfully real.
