Barbecue is this week’s offering in the Spotlight on Plays series from Broadway’s Best Shows. The streaming reading becomes available on December 10th and will remain available through Monday, December 14th.

This is a very funny play that has an early twist you don’t see coming. Reviews of the play have often given away that twist, but I say, the less you know the better.

On a very basic level the play is about a family intervention disguised as a barbecue. They are all there to help one family member who has a substantial drinking problem. Things from there don’t go quite as the characters planned, nor as the audience thinks they will. And there are more twists ahead.

Christopher Isherwood, writing in the New York Times, had issues with the second act, but admitted, “Mr. O’Hara, the author of last season’s audacious Bootycandy, has a heat-seeking imagination when it comes to style and structure.” (There are spoilers in his review, so if you want to be surprised, don’t read it.)

I enjoyed the play when I saw it at the Geffen Playhouse in 2016. That production was directed by Colman Domingo who appears in this reading.

The rest of the cast includes Carrie Coon (2013 revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), Kimberly Hébert Gregory (By the Way, Meet Vera Stark), Annie McNamara (Tony nominee for Slave Play), S. Epatha Merkerson (Come Back Little Sheba), Laurie Metcalf (Three Tall Women), David Morse (The Iceman Cometh), Kristine Nielsen (Present Laughter), Tamberla Perry and Heather Simms – both of whom appeared in Barbecue at The Public Theater.

Tickets are only $5 with proceeds benefitting The Actor’s Fund.

Photo: Robert O’Hara (Courtesy Playwrights Horizons)

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In the program for Black Super Hero Magic Mama, playwright Craig-Galván talks about witnessing an argument in a parking lot and saying to her daughter that if she had been a superhero she would have gone over there and kicked some ass. That was the inspiration for this play that ultimately deals with pressure Black women feel whenever they are forced to respond to the deaths of their children. Instead of grieving, they are expected to lead protests and speak openly about the tragic circumstances surrounding their child’s death.

Lest it seem that Black Super Hero Magic Mama is merely socio-political commentary, keep in mind that Craig-Galván was equally inspired by stories such as Harry Potter and The Wizard of Oz.

Robert O’Hara, who directed the stunning production of Barbecue at the Geffen Playhouse, helms this play.  Also in the cast are Noah Abbott, Reiko Aylesworth, Walter Belenky, Daryl C. Brown, Kevin Douglas and Cynthia Kaye McWilliams.

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