Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Soho Rep’s production of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s FAIRVIEW returns to New York enhanced and with a vengeance

• By drediman
• July 30, 2019
• No Comments

Heather Alicia Simms and Roslyn Ruff in Jackie Sibblies Drury’s “Fairview” at Theatre for a New Audience. Photo by Henry Grossman.

I was stunned and left speechless when I first encountered Fairview, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s play about racial identity and perception, at Soho Rep’s tiny venue. Then, I was unprepared and left almost suffocated by Ms. Drury’s unsparing play. Indeed, I walked out of the Walkerspace not really knowing quite how to process the experience. Since then, the play has claimed the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which has likely prompted the play’s return engagement at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn.

Well, Fairview has come back to New York with a vengeance. In a larger space, the play is able to breathe, and from a farther distance, I was able to more fully appreciate Ms. Drury’s overall construction. If the play to you seems more like an exercise in form over substance, you’re likely missing the point. What the playwright does so brilliantly is to – with chilling, scalpel-like precision (a rarity for plays about race) – chip away at the layers of accumulated stereotypes and false perceptions that have held back the African American community. If that means sacrificing depth of character and using the very act of presentational theater as a means to invert that one-way gaze, so be it.

Sarah Benson’s staging has been expanded to accommodate TFANA’s larger stage and auditorium, where it works beautifully. Luckily, she’s sacrificed none of her production’s discipline and bite. If anything, the play has become more comfortably self-aware, which allows it to make its point more cleanly and impactfully. The cast has remained intact from its Soho Rep days, where their intentionally over-the-top performances threatened to topple the play. In this new enhanced edition of Fairview, the play’s blow is more calibrated and therefore more merciless (particularly the spine-tingling and fourth wall shattering denouement).

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

FAIRVIEW
Off-Broadway, Play
Soho Rep / Theatre for a New Audience
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through August 11