The US performer Desiree Burch is the current Funny Women award champ, but don’t mistake Tar Baby for (just) a comedy. Yes, it starts as a jokey pretend-carnival about racial politics – but Burch is also being very serious indeed about prejudice, privilege and the sham of supposedly post-racial America. The passion and articulacy of Burch’s cri de coeur are stirring to experience, but the show’s anger, however justified, confuses its increasingly scattershot arguments. At the end, Burch tells us it’s our job to make meaning out of what she’s said, but I’d rather she’d made her own.
In the first half of Tar Baby, Burch dragoons audience members on stage to demonstrate her broad points about black history and racism. One game compels her stooges to convincingly rebut racist cliches: “All Colombians are drug dealers,” say. It’s intentionally uncomfortable, as is the sequence when Burch asks the audience for advice on how to be “more black”. But it doesn’t feel like a productive discomfort. Burch is such a domineering personality, and the subject so sensitive, punters tell her not necessarily what they think but what the show seems to require.
That last sequence follows Burch’s re-enactment of a film casting that obliged her to over-egg her blackness to land a role. It’s a great moment – she’s a stellar performer. But that can’t solve the problems of Tar Baby’s later sections: a rendition of the folktale that gives the show its name, which never yields its promised significance; then a from-the-heart rant about feeling the weight of four centuries of racial injustice on one’s back. It’s strong stuff, but diffuse – and its main point, that racism still exists, is an obvious one. I left reeling from Burch’s force of personality, admiring her refusal to soft-soap these deep feelings and deep-seated difficulties – but wishing Tar Baby had given them more focused and insightful expression.
- At Vault festival, London, until 14 February. Box office: 0871-220 0260.
