The last time I saw an actual tube of V05 Conditioning Hairdressing was in my beloved grandfather’s bathroom cabinet in the ‘90s. He was an old-fashioned Midwestern gentleman who preferred Black men to be as groomed, well-spoken and good-mannered as he was. I’m pretty sure I’m representing him well when I say he probably would have hated this play.
“Enough V05 For the Universe” is decidedly messy, outspoken, and crass in all the best ways. From the DIY funk aesthetics of the set and costume design, to the script’s retro-futuristic rhetoric, there is a certain bombast to the piece that balances well against its underlying social commentary.
Set in a bunker in a dystopian, post-Amerikkkan future, the play centers around three revolutionary Black women and their sometimes shared mate Charles Donovan (Anthony Harper), “the last Black man on Earth.” The movement leader is Mona Machine (Aixa Kendrick), a fanatical and lustful militant who’s celebrating her 130th birthday. Her comrades are Dr. Dorinda (Le’Asha Julius), Mona’s testy, snarky deputy, and Anna Tenna McCloud (Linda Greene), a dopey psychic plagued by terrible visions.
In this universe, these three women have managed to harness the powers of time, space, and reality itself to craft a brave new world where birds have been replaced by flying hair weave, and a rickety bridge separates the world as they know it from “The Great Expanse of Time and Everlastingness.” Mona’s radical agenda to effectively cancel the universe is referred to as “The Solution.” Under her rule, formerly oppressive concepts related to race, gender, and various forms of power have been “deleted and blocked” with the literal push of a button. What we’re left with is a trio scrambling to make sense of the world they’ve constructed, one in which desire and liberation have ironically become highly codified and prescriptive.
Director Melanie Maria Goodreaux gives the actors plenty of space to shine. Though initially spearheaded by Kendrick’s magnetic delivery and physical comedy, both Julius and Greene greatly impact the narrative as caricatures of dissent and reluctance, respectively. Overall, it is the entire cast’s commitment to their roles as the architects and destroyers of their newfound society that makes the play so engaging from start to finish.
While at first the Solution seems to be a viable reaction to anti-Blackness, misogyny, and other -isms, the intrusion of male characters like the traumatized, multiracial radical Manny St. Nicholas (Jonathan Duran) and Daniel (a white Sambo known to some characters as “Cracker Pink,” played by Mark Ashin) each throw a wrench into Mona’s plans for Black female sovereignty. Ecstatically played by the actors portraying them, Manny, Daniel, and even the mostly mute Charles Donovan each provide the audience with the perspectives of those left out by Mona’s machinations, providing necessary counterpoint to her supreme influence.
Whether you are laughing or crying by the play’s end, just know that “V05” is a visceral, Afro-futurist dark comedy that never lets up on ideas or on humor. If you love clunky sci-fi, cosmic drag deities, and fried chicken, then this show is definitely for you.