{"id":38454,"date":"2014-11-23T17:08:21","date_gmt":"2014-11-23T17:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38454"},"modified":"2014-11-25T21:44:24","modified_gmt":"2014-11-25T21:44:24","slug":"old-times-there-are-not-forgotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38454","title":{"rendered":"Old Times There Are Not Forgotten"},"content":{"rendered":"

Old Times There Are Not Forgotten<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2014-05-04<\/p>\n

Ben Brantley<\/strong><\/a>, Chief Theater Critic<\/p>\n

\u2018An Octoroon,\u2019 a Slave-Era Tale at Soho Rep<\/em><\/p>\n

Some people are paralyzed by self-consciousness. The playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins<\/a> is inspired, energized and perhaps even set free by it.<\/p>\n

You could say that he transforms self-consciousness into art, except then you have to ask what art is, as Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins surely would. How about into entertainment, then? No, that sounds too unequivocally pleasurable and guilt free. Well, let\u2019s just say that Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins turns self-consciousness into theater, and that this is a lot more stimulating than it sounds.<\/p>\n

Some degree of self-consciousness is inevitable for any latter-day dramatist taking on Dion Boucicault\u2019s<\/a> \u201cThe Octoroon<\/a>,\u201d which is what Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins is doing in the exhilarating, booby-trapped production called \u201cAn Octoroon<\/a>\u201d (those articles make a difference!) that opened at Soho Rep<\/a> on Sunday night. Though a huge hit in this country in the mid-19th century, \u201cThe Octoroon\u201d would appear approachable on today\u2019s stages only with a set of very long, sterilized tongs.<\/p>\n

It is, first of all, an unabashed melodrama, with all the handkerchief wringing and mustache twirling that term implies. The story it relates is an incident-crammed weepy of forbidden love in the slaveholding South, where social status is measured in drops of blood. (Octoroon<\/a> refers to someone who is one-eighth black.)…<\/p>\n

…The basic plot of this \u201cOctoroon\u201d is Boucicault\u2019s, more or less. Its title character is the beauteous Zoe (Amber Gray<\/a> of \u201cNatasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812\u201d), the daughter of a slave and a recently deceased plantation owner. Zoe is beloved both by the plantation\u2019s worldly and gentlemanly new owner, George (Mr. Myers), and by its former overseer, the evil M\u2019Closkey (Mr. Myers again), who wants to buy the place for himself.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s Plot A (or most of it; I didn\u2019t mention the local rich girl, played in high burlesque style by Zo\u00eb Winters, loves George, too). There\u2019s a Plot B, but I won\u2019t go into detail about that one, except to say that it involves a lovable rapscallion of a slave boy (Ben Horner, in blackface) and his pal, an American Indian, I mean Native American or … heck, I\u2019m all tongue-tied now. Anyway, he\u2019s played by Mr. Wolohan, in redface.<\/p>\n

Oh, relax. It\u2019s only a play, isn\u2019t it? Except one of Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins\u2019s points is that nothing that deals with race in this racially conflicted country can ever be reduced to an easy showbiz formula, whether satirical or uplifting. His \u201cOctoroon\u201d invites us to laugh loudly and easily at how na\u00efve the old stereotypes now seem, until suddenly nothing seems funny at all…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Old Times There Are Not Forgotten The New York Times 2014-05-04 Ben Brantley, Chief Theater Critic \u2018An Octoroon,\u2019 a Slave-Era Tale at Soho Rep Some people are paralyzed by self-consciousness. The playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is inspired, energized and perhaps even set free by it. You could say that he transforms self-consciousness into art, except then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,5,8,6940,20],"tags":[18487,18486,1627,2640,2327,304],"class_list":["post-38454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-ben-brantley","tag-branden-jacobs-jenkins","tag-dion-boucicault","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-the-octoroon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}