(Photo of Yasmin D’Oshun by Mark Halliday)
What can I tell you about Fairview? Since Jackie Sibblies Drury’s script is about the distorting power of the white gaze and the nightmarish inescapability of white opinion — and since I’m a white guy — I’m going to opt for not telling you much.
The play’s central characters are all members of the Frasier family. They’re Black. When we meet them, they’re preparing for Grandma Frasier’s birthday dinner and they seem to be in a kind of sitcom reality — harried mom, gormless dad, plucky teenage daughter, smart-talking aunt — but there are glitches in the matrix: the stereo acts up.
And, when culinary disaster strikes, Drury starts rolling out a series of strategies, modes of storytelling that get increasingly surreal, complex, and challenging. These layers are often funny and always immersive. Theatre bends reality and Drury finds astonishingly original ways to do the bending. Theatre is also personal. Race is personal. And Drury takes full advantage of this viscerality, too.
In my experience, Fairview is almost uniquely disorienting — and reorienting. And I’m moved by its generosity.
That’s pretty much it from me. Much of the power of Drury’s storytelling is generated by its surprises; I encourage you to discover them for yourselves. This production is sure to be one of the shows of the season, if not the show of the season.
It’s well performed and beautifully designed. Go see it.
FAIRVIEW By Jackie Sibblies Drury. Co-directed by Kwaku Okyere and Mindy Parfitt. On Friday, September 29. A Search Party production in partnership with b current Performing Arts in The Cultch’s Historic Theatre until October 8. Tickets
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