Loud and messy and smart—just like the women it depicts—BLKS is a rambunctious new comedy by Aziza Barnes about a trio of millennial women who share an apartment in Brooklyn.
Opening on Thursday in a fast-paced production by MCC Theater, BLKS presents a mad night out on the town with three African-American roomies who are recently done with college and struggling to get their adult lives into gear.
A hopeless romantic, June (Antoinette Crowe-Legacy) just snagged a job at an accounting firm. The vivacious Imani (Alfie Fuller) somehow hopes to break into stand-up comedy by performing Eddie Murphy’s sexist Raw routine. A brooding Octavia (Paige Gilbert) is an out of work barista and would-be screenwriter.
During a post-coital pee—several among the play’s dozen or so scenes occur in bathrooms—Octavia spies a spot on her clitoris and instantly fears that it’s cancer. Octavia freaks out, which sends Ry (Coral Peña), her semi-girlfriend, miserably slamming out the door and inspires Imani to grab a bottle of Maker’s Mark.
“If you can’t drink the day when you get a clit mole, I’m really not sure when you can,” Imani observes. Soon they are joined by June, raging over catching her longtime boyfriend cheating yet again. The three decide to go out clubbing in Manhattan.
Smoking weed and bolting down shots, the trio’s overnight flirtations and confrontations—and what happens back in the apartment afterwards—comprise the remainder of Barnes’ frenetic comedy, which sports two explicitly funny sexual encounters. Individuals bewitched and later bewildered by these impulsive women include Justin (Chris Myers), a guy so excessively nice that he’s kinda weird, and a rich girl (Marié Botha) whose name is never heard but who’s apologetic about being so white.
Along the play’s sporadically uproarious 95-minute way, the women reveal glimpses of their serious sides, especially so the volatile, emotionally immature Octavia, whose inability to define her relationship with Ry appears rooted in self-doubt. Bright as they are, all three are shadowed by distrust of a world around them where the police are worse than indifferent and white people are perceived to be clueless and unreceptive.
If the play turns a mite sentimental in its concluding scenes, the quirky charm of its characters and the words that fly out of their mouths easily compensate. What is especially notable about BLKS is the playwright’s expressive way with conversation, mixing raucous, even raunchy, talk with believable passages of introspection. Barnes’ pungent realistic dialogue embraces a dynamic blend of black vernacular (freely dropping the n-word and innumerable expletives) with rich urban slang that sounds wonderfully alive.
Ably shifting the play’s moods, Robert O’Hara, the director, obtains exuberant performances from his leading ladies, but they share a tendency to shout their lines, so some of the wordplay becomes difficult to grasp. (One wonders whether there also may be acoustical issues within MCC’s new theater that have yet to be mitigated by the sound designers.) Between the loudness of some of the acting and the voluble nature of the play, the production may finally leave some viewers feeling more exhausted than enlivened by the proceedings.
Dealing with a relatively intimate story on an extremely wide stage, designer Clint Ramos makes good use of a turntable to reveal several rooms inside a lived-in apartment, places within a lounge, and out along the city’s sidewalks. Dede Ayite’s sex-see clubbing clothes and Alex Jainchill’s lighting support the acting and staging, which is typical of MCC Theater’s production excellence.
Said to be a first play by Barnes, a poet and performer still in her middle 20s, BLKS is an engaging comedy likely to appeal especially to people who’ll recognize something of themselves in these beguiling characters.
BLKS opened May 9, 2019, at the MCC Theater Space and runs through June 2. Tickets and information: mcctheater.org
