Safe Space review – a lively campus comedy grapples with the culture wars | platform

WWhat happens when public statues stop serving as historical markers of civic pride and become offensive to many in the present? Sometimes they are overthrown by force, as in the case of the 17th-century slave trader, Edward Colston, whose bronze statue was rolled into the waters of Bristol in 2020. But several years before that, there was a protest over Yale University’s Calhoun College, named in honor of the 19th-century alumnus, John C. Calhoun, a white supremacist and ardent advocate of slavery (the college was renamed Named after Grace Murray. Hopper in 2017).

The demand to rename it is the subject of this debut play by writer and actor Jimmy Boggio, also a Yale alumnus. A fictional statue of Calhoun puts the culture wars in full swing. A petition organized by Omar (Ivan Uyk) is distributed to the student dormitories. Connor (Bogio) is her main opponent. He criticizes virtue signaling and snowflakes, but insists he is not a racist (“I voted for Obama”). He also tries to win his black roommate, Isaiah (Ernest Kingsley Jr.), to his cause. Meanwhile, Connor’s friend, Annabelle (Celine Buckens), who comically displays all the signs of white guilt, has ambitions to become the head of women’s leadership at Yale, but is outsmarted by new student Stacy (Bola Akejo).

It’s a lively setting that attempts to grapple with intersecting themes of race, gender, and privilege, with dynamic direction from Roy Alexander Wise and beautiful a cappella interludes. But the tone feels like a broad campus comedy, complete with sophomoric sex, and a silly masturbation scene. The Obama-era language may be emphatic but it sounds outdated.

Omar is made to look goofy so that he resembles a sitcom character rather than an anti-racist character with a blind spot about gender. Stacey’s portrayal as an ambitious black student from the wrong side of the tracks is overstated, and Connor turns to the liberal cause after one altercation with Isaiah, while Isaiah’s shift to a more politicized black identity also seems too abrupt.

Connor as a whole seems too nice, too apologetic, to be the hard-right enemy he’s meant to be, so there’s not enough tension between the characters. You get the impression that they would all be part of the No Kings campaign if they were students today.

There are some powerful scenes, such as the altercation between Omar and Isaiah, but not all of the grenades explode. A cappella remains fun. Connor and Isaiah patch up their differences through music and Boggio and Kingsley Jr. sing great, but the question of whether a Simon and Garfunkel song can ultimately save this friendship doesn’t have the emotion it should.