Review: FAIRVIEW at Rogue Machine At The Matrix Theatre

Every now and again, a play comes along that proves difficult to creatively and critically evaluate, a work that looks to provoke as much (or more) than it entertains. And here we are.

The play is the L.A. premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s FAIRVIEW, presented by Rogue Machine Theatre at the Matrix. Like so many Rogue Machine’s productions, FAIRVIEW – the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner - boasts a more than solid cast, a bold directorial vision and the chutzpah to get in the face of its audience and dare them to blink, to rise and certainly to keep from squirming.

Check that. There’s very little about this experience that will stave off discomfort. Despite its title, its well-intentioned if cynical nod to diplomacy, Oz Scott’s production is a swift kick to the nether regions. You will probably laugh – hard and often, and you will emerge after 100 minutes with plenty to discuss. You may also depart FAIRVIEW angry, queasy and with (undeserved?) feelings of culpability.

What begins as a light-hearted “comedic family drama” about a Black family preparing for the grandmother’s birthday lunch pivots into something very different as a group of unseen commenters begin to talk about - and around – issues of race. When the worlds of the performers and a critical peanut gallery intersect, things get nuts.

First, we meet our model family who feel like they belong in a sitcom. In a nicely-realized suburban house (designed by Mark Mendelson) Beverly (played by Marie-Francoise Theodore) is anxiously slicing up carrots and monitoring every detail of the birthday party she is hosting. Her well-meaning husband, Dayton (Marco Martinez), sits at her beck and call, trying to keep her calm amidst Beverly’s ever more frenetic insistence that this day “has to go well.” First to arrive is Beverly’s sister, Jasmine (Jasmine Ashanti), as fiesty and showy as her sister is tightly-wound. We then meet Beverly and Dayton’s teen-age daughter, Keisha (iesha m. daniels) who asks her aunt Jasmine to help lobby her mom to let her take a gap year before going to college. This will not be a popular request.

Anticipated later arrivals: Beverly and Jasmine’s brother Tyrone, an attorney who is running late, and Keisha’s school friend, Erika. Moma, the birthday girl, remains upstairs out of sight until the party gets underway. When the full party is assembled, the newcomers let us enjoy the maximum effect of Wendell Carmichael’s cheeky costumes.  

And that’s your set-up.  The first act ends with a character passing out. Then that same first scene plays out a second time, but in silence as a series of overheard voices chimes in, beginning with the question, “If you could choose to be a different race, what race would you be?” The discussion deepens, pivoting between heated and revealing as two additional voices joining the conversation. Initially they’re not directly commenting on the family comedy action, but then they are. When one of the characters says she would be African American, the question poser calls bullshit “because it’s hard to be African American, and I don’t think you really mean in.”

But she does, and she’ll try to prove it. Later, as the birthday party action continues, our previously overheard quartet of people arrive and enter the action in ways that line up with the issues they’ve been talking about. Their entrance scrambles Keisha’s world no end, since she’s the character upon whom everyone largely seems focused. As Suze, perhaps the most well-meaning of the interlopers, Daisy Tichenor is as eloquent with her silence as she had previously been explaining what the concept of family means to her.

FAIRVIEW is a play about the presumptiveness of stereotypes, about the effects and landmines of what Toni Morrison has referred to as “The White Gaze.” Beverly and her family are, by turns, funny, joyous, nurturing and occasionally neurotic in the ways that viewers of family dramas (particularly on TV) have come to expect. The act of burlesquing or subverting these tropes in ways that are deliberately racist means threading a needle which Scott and his quite game cast are able to accomplish. When the action of the play turns madcap, Scott keeps things on the rails and then pivots back to the play’s final, deadly serious appeal.

The performances are excellent. Theodore sets an early comedic tone, establishing Beverly as a desperate control freak who can still unclench and join the family dance when the music starts playing. Martinez and Ashanti foil her expertly as – respectively - a loving husband who will not be ruffled and a sister too self-absorbed (and hilariously so) to care. The escalating monologs that Drury has crafted for Jasmine, Keisha and interloper Jimbo (Tyler Gaylord) is the kind of crackerjack writing that actors devour. Indeed, from start to finish, this production is consistently - even dangerously - funny.

Also, deadly serious. FAIRVIEW concludes with a plea that is as basic as it is naïve, after which members of the audience are given a choice. It’s at this point that iesha m. daniels, so charismatic and every inch a teenager in Keisha’s early scenes, takes over and becomes the engine and the conscience of the play.  Call it a party gone dreadfully wrong…or perfectly right. It really is entirely a matter of perspective.

FAIRVIEW continues through April 19 at 7657 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles