The prize-winning author of “Daddy,” Jeremy O. Harris, made a big splash last December with Slave Play, his seriocomic study in interracial sexual dysfunction.
Staged by New York Theatre Workshop, the provocative Slave Play marked the 29 year-old Harris’ metropolitan debut. Generally rapturous reviews has made this third-year student at the Yale School of Drama the mega-hot playwright of the moment.
Speaking of big splashes, viewers in the front rows at the Signature Center space, where Harris’ “Daddy” opened on Tuesday, are likely to get damp because the play’s setting features a saltwater swimming pool in its foreground that gets plenty of use.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★ review here.]
Glass walls of a modernistic villa glow behind the patio around the pool. Aptly designed by Matt Saunders, the handsome setting for Harris’ contemporary drama depicts a swank estate in Bel Air, California, and recalls David Hockney’s homoerotic pool paintings.
These striking visuals are appropriate, because Harris’ three-act play involves, among many other matters—far too many extraneous matters—a queer romance and costly artwork.
Andre (Alan Cumming), an extremely wealthy, older, white man, who collects fine art, acquires Franklin (Ronald Peet), a poor, young, black artist, as his lover. Their passion is mutual but the way their relationship develops is scarcely equal: The dominating Andre assumes a paternal role even as mild sadomasochism (or at least bare-butt spanking) seems integral to it.
As the first act draws to a close, Andre dances Franklin around the pool crooning George Michael’s Father Figure while a swaying, three-member gospel choir backs him up.
Before going further, it is important to note that this play, relatively realistic in its initial scenes, increasingly turns surreal. So, yes, a gospel choir materializes in the story and to some extent symbolizes Franklin’s traditional Baptist upbringing by his single mom.
Popping up with the choir—she is discovered mid-pool, fully dressed—is Zora (Charlayne Woodard), Franklin’s scripture-quoting mama, whose phone calls to her son were going unanswered as his affair heated up. By the time Zora arrives in the flesh, Franklin is residing in Andre’s mansion and already enjoying much critical acclaim for the art he creates.
Not incidentally, Franklin describes the little soft sculptures that he crafts as “weird dolls of black boys” that represent himself. (Zora calls them “coon babies.”) Franklin’s subsequent manipulation of these and other, larger, doppelgangers may look kinda silly but Harris means this business to be significantly symbolic.
The second act sees the story crystalize into a triangle comprised by Andre, Franklin, and Zora, who dislikes Andre not so much over the queer basis of his bonds with her son but because she believes Andre to be a corrupting influence. Meanwhile, Franklin’s behavior grows more and more infantile.
A bizarre third act, which climaxes with an immersive exorcism, mostly proves madly incoherent.
Although Harris composes vivid dialogue, this flawed, overlong drama is heavily overwritten with beaux arts babble, unclear religious and psychological themes, and Rodeo Drive name-checking. Still, much as “Daddy” smells of chlorine and youthful pretentiousness, its splashy production is often entertaining.
Evidently given a blank check by The New Group and Vineyard Theatre, which co-produce the show, director Danya Taymor provides an operatic staging, complete with plenty of thunderous musical underscoring, a lavish wardrobe by Montana Levi Blanco, and intricate, color-suffused lighting by Isabella Byrd. Played out upon that Hockney-esque landscape, these extremely stylish visuals certainly are impressive and helpfully lend a sense of importance to the proceedings.
Looking like an aging satyr as Andre, Alan Cumming gives his worldly billionaire easy confidence and elegance. Sharply dressed in vivid colors, Charlayne Woodard projects Zora as a clear-eyed woman secure in herself as well as her faith. The intensity of these performances tends to put Ronald Peet’s believable portrayal of the emotionally fragile Franklin somewhat in the shade, even as he evinces his character’s thumb-sucking regressions.
Neatly handling lesser roles, Kahyun Kim and Tommy Dorfman are amusing as Franklin’s shallow BFFs, and Hari Nef exuberantly depicts the owner of a chic art gallery. The omnipresent (though ostensibly invisible) choir is ably sung by Carrie Compere, Denise Manning and Onyie Nwachukwu.
Reportedly, “Daddy” was written several years ago and helped Harris get into Yale. After watching this play talk on and on for nearly three hours with numbing results, one can only hope that his instructors there will be able to convince this talented, but terribly long-winded, writer that less often really does mean more.
