Bootcandy ★★ ★ ★
The Gate Theatre, London

Do you remember spin art? It was the art of carnivals and funfairs, bright sploshes of colour thrown onto a spinning canvas. It was art that children, lacking the tools of adults, could make. Whirling chaotically during creation, it suddenly stops and a final, beautiful picture emerges. Robert O’Hara’s Bootycandy is spin art theatre. A clash of contrasting chaotic colours seemingly thrown at random by a child that eventually coalesces into something amazing.

Bootycandy was originally a series of small playlets. Each a striking glimpse of lives at various stages of formation or disintegration. The child who is curious about adult words demands that his mother explain them (Bootycandy is her preferred euphemism for dick). A pastor who is tired of hearing rumours and gossip from his flock coming out in a weave and cha-cha heels. Women arguing over how to name a child. Two young men groping towards their first sexual experience with each other. A man trying to evade being mugged at a bus stop, or at least imagining he is going to be mugged. A young boy being shamed for a man following them home. They seem disconnected but they are all brought together in Bootycandy as the concepts of writers workshopping at a conference. Maybe. 

Bootycandy plays with the audience. It plays on their sense of what is real, of what is theatre, and even what their role is as an audience, with the flaming pastor (Luke Wilson) bringing them into the narrative with a call and response. But within the dizzying kaleidoscope of colours there is one frame, in the character of Sutter (Prince Kundai). He is the child who is trying to understand the adult world, he is the one who is the subject of gossip, it is him who the adults cannot quite work out. And he is the one at the centre of the sexual opportunities and threats. 

The cast radiate. Hugely versatile, whether playing multiple characters or in the case of Kundai playing the same character at different ages. Each of them has their moments of well-crafted intensity, dazzling wordplay or physical humour. The switches between characters and scenes are occasionally jarring but they never fail to deliver on the content.

Bootycandy is discomforting at first. The picture can’t quite be seen. The contrasts are too great. No patterns are forming. And then it’s there, right in front of you. A life, sharp and bright. Too colourful to miss. 

This UK premiere stars Bimpé Pacheco, Prince Kundai, DK Fashola, Luke Wilson, and Roly Botha and is directed by Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu

Review by ANDREW HEBDEN

Queerguru Contributing Editor ANDREW HEBDEN is a MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing, and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement, he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre, and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day.