An Octoroon

by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 24 June 2017

Ned Bennett directs a cast of eight in this new play freely adapted and commenting on Dion Boucicault's 1859 play The Octoroon, a melodramatic shocker purporting to address the slave question by following the fortunes of an octoroon (one-eighth negro) who nobly forswears her love for the newly arrived inheritor of the plantation on which she has been brought up.

In this version the African-American playwright BJJ (Ken Nwosu) opens proceedings with a monologue about his position on the New York drama scene and his attempt to stage his adaptation with limited resources. This entails him 'whiting up' to play the new master George and the villain M'Closkey, while a white actor (Alistair Toovey) has to 'black up' to play various negro males. The playwright Boucicault (Kevin Trainor) in turn 'reds up' to play a native American, and later as an auctioneer insouciantly announces that he has been sunburnt while carrying out his duties. The female characters (Vivian Oparah, Emmanuella Cole, Cassie Clare, Celeste Dodwell and Iola Evans) are not required to disguise their skin colour.

The play therefore sends up some of its dramatic conventions while adding sharper point to the issues of race and exploitation by showing both where Boucicault was raising serious questions and where he was blinkered by the constraints of his own time and outlook. There are some explicit railings against injustice, but also a sentimental idea of 'noble' self-sacrifice. Some of his characters are exaggerated to point up their absurdity, such as the villainous M'Closkey, the obsequiously loyal elder house slave Pete, the plain speaking house servants Minnie and Dido or the empty headed but wealthy heiress Dora. Zoe the octoroon, however, maintains her dignity throughout.

The plot of the original play depends for one of its major twists on the providential use of new-fangled photographs to attribute guilt and innocence successfully, while there was also the sensation of an exploding boat to show off entertaining stage-craft. The modern playwright interrupts proceedings to point out how unsatisfactory the plot device will be to a modern audience for whom even moving images are no novelty, while of course elaborate stage effects are hardly possible in the confines of the Orange Tree. The former problem is overcome with a sobering projection of the famous photograph of a crowd celebrating the lynching of two men while the original passionate plea for the recourse to authoritative justice rather than angry communal vengeance is deployed to save both the innocent native American and the guilty M'Closkey from mob violence. The latter problem is resolved by the cast removing the stage floor to reveal a pool underneath, and constructing a smaller stage platform above it on which M'Closkey dies a spectacularly bloody death. (Perhaps this was done as much to prevent the audience from attempting to walk over a 'blood' drenched floor when leaving, as much as to great tension within the play). More stage blood per person seems to be used in small auditoria than in large - I have noticed that there are often copious amounts in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse productions.

The overall effect is to provide a pertinent and at times witty commentary on what would otherwise have been a ridiculously melodramatic old war horse of a play.