Kyle Brown in Bootycandy | Photo by Roya DelSol
A co-production by Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Obsidian Theatre, Bootycandy, playwright Robert O’Hara’s semi-autobiographical, outrageous, theatrically disruptive play about Black queer life is a real, um… mouthful… intended to stick in our throats. And that’s not just a wild interpretive fancy of mine; the central character of Sutter (Kyle Brown) asserts, during a meta-theatrical disturbance that ends the first act, that he hopes we “choke on it.”
And what is it, exactly? The image O’Hara conjures here is a chicken bone—an uncomfortably vivid impression of ingestive trauma and a potent symbol. As the collection of Black playwrights gathered to talk about their work push back at the irksome moderator (Dan Mousseau) and his patronizing insistence that they align their work to suit White expectations, we are invited to re-contextualize the rousing, goofy, baffling and bawdy vignettes we’ve already witnessed and carry their baggage with us into the second act’s increasingly hilarious, disturbing and poignant episodes.
From the opening scene, this feels giddy and provocative. We first meet Sutter portraying his younger self asking his exasperated mother (Helen Belay) about blowjobs. This funny yet discomfiting conversation is intensified by the fact that this naive yet precocious boy is embodied by a very adult man in tighty-whities, forcing us to reconcile the apparent invite to sexualize the on-stage reality of him while we simultaneously imagine the child he’s portraying.
From there, we catch up with Sutter as a teenager, encountering predatory older men and asserting his queer personhood with parents who are absurdly conservative in their demands (Meghan Swaby‘s depiction of his mother here is deliciously comic grotesquerie); and, as a man, abjectly flailing about in a toxic relationship with his very messed-up brother-in-law. Yearning and hurtful, Mousseau and Brown have an intriguingly sick and frustrating dynamic. Their most compelling work together though comes as things take a dark turn towards the end, with Sutter coopting his friend in a cruel prank on a drunken, straight White man they encounter at a bar.
These are some of my favourite moments in the play. O’Hara is feeling along the edges of human behaviour, examining motivations, prodding at the limits of our empathy and social responsibility with situational specifics we must thrash out for ourselves—prompted, of course, by meta-theatrical intrusions. Though demonstrably cooler, less overtly emotive than Mousseau, Brown is especially riveting in this fraught space—alienating, seductive, vulnerable and defiant.
Christopher Allen in Bootycandy | Photo by Roya DelSol
Throughout, we examine Black family dynamics across generations, gossipy phone calls (the stretched phone cord choreography here is great farce), and a gloriously rousing sermon from a drag queen reverend as he reveals his fabulous alter ego to a congregation we imagine are a mix of grateful kindred spirits and scandalized, conservative busy-bodies. Christopher Allen absolutely nails the balance of sly shade, empowering spectacle and fierce sincerity in this flamboyant, declaratively humanistic portrait.
While Mousseau’s surfer dude schtick in this sequence solidifies his chameleonic chops, the Lesbian Break-up as Game Show competition allows Belay and Swaby to be gleefully nasty in a way that seems ritualistically performative. Wondering at O’Hara’s intent (his meta-theatrical commentary is sometimes too on-the-nose to be the whole deal), I can’t help but compare this over-the-top, vindictive sparring match with Sutter’s more naturalistic, harder to swallow, mean-spirited impulses later on.
A defining feature of O’Hara’s play is how elegantly it negotiates these jarring tonal shifts and fully immerses us in moments both heightened and heart-wrenching. In response, director Jay Northcott’s production embraces theatrical artifice with a deliberately garish aesthetic. Nick Blais’ abstracted set—with its protrusions and suspended curves in a gaudy palette of orange, pink and yellow—is serving 1970s game show. The transparent acrylic panelling and cube were really doing it for me. Darren Shaen‘s lighting introduces cooler colours that simultaneously make the set pop and often clash with it. Designer Arianna Moodie’s costumes are retro-chic pastiche and my eyes were consistently drawn to some homely, earth tone sweaters that gave me comfy shivers.
I don’t want to spoil the specifics, but there is a prosthetic, uh, appendage that elevates the disconcerting energy of key moments by being, well, just… there.
It’s all very silly, until it’s not—this pattern repeats. That relentless backing and filling is a key feature of Bootycandy and, while it does disarm certain awful moments, making them more easily digestible as dark comedy, I don’t think it diminishes them.
Bootycandy
September 30 to October 17, 2026
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
(12 Alexander St.)
2 hours (including intermission)
Helen Belay, Kyle Brown, Christopher Allen, & Meghan Swaby in Bootycandy | Photo by Roya DelSol