Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' reimagining of Dion Boucicault's play is quite the radical reinvention, starting immediately with the very opening. Ken Nwosu, as 'BJJ' himself, steps onstage in just his underwear. It highlights his blackness, mirroring his soliloquy on the difficulties of being a black playwright. It's confrontational as he addresses the audience directly, literally sitting amongst us at one point, playing up to type. And it thoroughly tears apart the fourth wall of this play within a play, setting up a safe, stylised, performative space within which to explore race.
The core of the play remains the same: a melodramatic comedy from 1859 set on a Louisiana plantation that's to be sold to pay a debt. In the midst of negotiations, the young George who has inherited the plantation from his uncle, falls in love with his uncle's bastard daughter Zoe - the titular Octoroon, someone who's an eighth black. It's a play that, at the time, sparked controversial debate about the abolition of slavery and mixed race relations. Since then, there have been countless other plays and films exploring similar themes.
What's interesting here, though, is BJJ's treatment of the play. An old fashioned tale of slavery is heightened with fresh relevance by a modern, performative element. For starters, the performers have grotesque painted faces that make a mockery of the notion of race. Dramatic lighting adds a technological twist and cellist James Douglas brings cinematic flare through music. And the performances are rife with modernisms: from the ghetto talk of slaves Minnie (Vivian Oparah), Dido (Emmanuella Cole) and Grace (Cassie Clare), to the way Nwosu cleverly jumps between playing George and the play's villain M'Closky, to the duplicitous belle Dora played by Celeste Dodwell with cartoonish glee in her oversized dress.
These modernisms slash through the layers of the play, as if the script has been ripped apart to reveal the theatrical mechanics churning away underneath. It's a clever way of conjoining history with present day, of asking us to question a past that is still present just beneath the surface of today.
The set changes do add to the stylised performance as we witness the theatrics being unpacked and built up again before our eyes, but they also unnecessarily elongate the production and could've been implemented more smoothly. This isn't exactly a subtle play, occasionally overstating its point although there are plenty of darker, poignant moments to ponder over. It's witty, bold, controversial and haunting all at once.
4/5
Watch: An Octoroon runs at the Orange Tree Theatre until 24th June.
Photos: The Other Richard
