Life During War Time: 'Antebellum'

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"ANTEBELLUM," RECEIVING ITS world premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, is a gripping, even shocking drama. Robert O'Hara's play challenges audience expectations and received notions — about love, theater, America, race, etc. — as well as obscenity codes.

O'Hara weaves together two detailed plots. One thread concerns the imprisonment of a gay African-American nightclub singer (the wonderful Carlton Byrd) held as a sex slave by a Nazi commandant (Andrew Price) during Hitler's ascendancy. Snatches of dialogue (including an important "I love you") are in German, making a date who can sprechen useful. The playwright winks at his own last name by setting the rest of the story around the 1939 premiere of "Gone With the Wind" in Atlanta.

As "Wind"-mania and its attendant nostalgia for the supposed good old days sweeps the city, Sarah (Jenna Sokolowski), the "simple" wife of a prominent Jewish industrialist (Nick Vienna as Ariel Roca) is called upon by a beguiling stranger, Edna Black Rock (Jessica Dukes). The painful history of Roca and Black Rock is gradually revealed, and scabs on the American psyche are eloquently picked at as the tale winds to a climax.

The cast, company, crew (particularly those behind the beautiful, spooky and elaborate set) and O'Hara realize the dramatic provocateur's dream with "Antebellum," successfully marrying deeply intellectual and resonant art with liberal doses of male full-frontal nudity and Nazi sex experiments.

» Woolly Mammoth, 641 D St. NW; through April 26, $26-$60; 202-393-3939. (Gallery Place-Chinatown)

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos
Photo courtesy Stan Barouh/Woolly Mammoth