Barbecue
Opening Night: October 8, 2015
Closing: November 1, 2015
Theater: The Public Theater
The O’Mallerys have gathered in their local park to share some barbecue and straight talk with their sister Barbara, whose spiral of drugs and recklessness has forced her siblings to stage an open-air intervention. But the event becomes raucous and unpredictable as familial stereotypes collide with hard realities, and racial politics slam up against the stories we tell—and maybe even believe—about who we were and who we’ve become.
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October 8, 2015
Not much food is consumed at either of the two fractious family gatherings depicted in “Barbecue,” a rawly funny but uneven new comedy by the talented Robert O’Hara that opened on Thursday at the Public Theater. Grilling meat and slicing pies are really only decoys, in fact. In both cases the real purpose of gathering the siblings from the O’Mallery families — one white, one black — is to wrestle a member of the clan into rehab. Mr. O’Hara, the author of last season’s audacious “Bootycandy,” has a heat-seeking imagination when it comes to style and structure. That play took the form of a sketch comedy show as it tackled a tough subject, the stigmatization of homosexuality in African-American culture. “Barbecue” also has a frisky structure, but, in this case, the fun stops a little too early: Mr. O’Hara springs a big reveal at the close of the first act that ultimately turns the play in a more serious and less satisfying direction.
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