This play by Jackie Sibblies Drury is tricky to write about.

It arrives from New

York garlanded with praise including the Pulitzer prize for drama. We are asked
to reveal as little as possible about its endless surprises. And, since one of its key
ideas is that black experience is expected to conform to white perceptions, any
reservations I have would seem to reinforce its thesis. Yet, while I loved its
intellectual cleverness and theatrical daring, I found myself wanting to argue with
it.

It starts conventionally enough. We are in a well-off African American household,

sumptuously designed by Tom Scutt, preparing for a grandma’s birthday.
Beverly, the hostess, is in a state of high anxiety which her husband, Dayton,
vainly seeks to calm. But Beverly’s sister, Jasmine, arrives and exudes a cattily
stylish superiority. Things only get worse when Jasmine intrudes in a debate
about whether Beverly’s daughter, Keisha, should be allowed a gap year, and
when grandma’s birthday cake goes up in flames.

This is the kind of situation – the family reunion that goes wrong – that we’ve
seen countless times before. But that is part of Sibblies Drury’s point: a staple of
the traditional white sitcom is being applied to a black family as if the experiences
were interchangeable. Sibblies Drury then goes much further in ways impossible
to describe without ruining the experience. I will only say I found echoes of Caryl
Churchill’s Blue Heart in the way the first scene is mimetically replayed. But,
while the actors mouth the words, we hear an overlaid audio-track in which four
white people debate which race they would opt for if they had a choice.

FacebookTwitterPinterest
Generation gap … Donna Banya as Keisha. Photograph: Marc Brenner
Advertisement

Sibblies Drury develops this idea in stimulating ways. If the play has an obvious
forebear, it is Branden Jacob-Jenkins’s An Octoroon (also premiered at New
York’s Soho Rep), which subverted the idea that racial identity can be defined by
easy labels. But Sibblies Drury’s argument about the unchallenged autonomy of
white narratives comes at an odd time. Hamilton, a hit on two continents,
presents a slice of American history from people of colour’s perspective. A current
New York musical, Soft Power, hilariously reverses The King and I to show
Hillary Clinton being re-educated by an Asian. And Ntozake Shange’s For Colored
Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, written in 1976 and lately revived, offers a
moving, unfiltered portrait of black experience.

Fairview: the Pulitzer winner whose creator hopes

it has a short shelf life
Read more

Difficult as it is for me to question Sibblies Drury’s argument – about what an

American critic called “the warping power of the white gaze” – I feel her play
takes little account of shifts in contemporary culture. It is, however, brilliantly
directed by Nadia Latif and buoyantly performed. Nicola Hughes (Beverly),
Rhashan Stone (Dayton), Naana Agyei-Ampadu (Jasmine) and Donna Banya
(Keisha) excellently show an affluent family in the process of disintegration.
Esther Smith, Julie Dray, Matthew Needham and David Dawson represent a
white society that seeks to interpret or appropriate them.

This is definitely a play to see, if you can, and to argue about afterwards. It will
also induce unease in white, middle-class liberals. Whether it will shock you into
a new awareness – at a time when there is, especially in theatre, a hunger for
inclusiveness – is something only you can decide.

• At the Young Vic, London, until 18 January.

Playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury and director Nadia Latif are about to
open Fairview at the Young Vic. I’ve just told them I know next to nothing about
Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer prizewinner, and their smiles mirror each other. Latif
nods and says one word: “Great!”

I think I know three things about Fairview: it revolves around a black American
family, there’s some exploration of class, or specifically, the black middle class,
and there’s something to do with surveillance. Is that correct? What else can I
know about the play? Sibblies Drury smiles. “It takes place in a theatre. And
there’s going to be an audience.” Latif interjects: “Hopefully! And there’s a set.”
“There’s totally a set.” The two laugh again.

The media around a play typically tells a possible audience what it will be
“about”. This makes sense: people want to know if a play will appeal to them, and
information about characters, themes and plot can convince them to buy tickets.
But Fairview bucks this trend. From the reviews of its original run in the US to
the Young Vic’s website and social media channels, information about what
actually happens in the play is scant. This is what Sibblies Drury wanted, and
Latif (as well as most journalists) has been more than happy to get on board. “No
great thing is about any one thing,” Latif says. Sibblies Drury agrees. “If you can
sum it up in one sentence, it would be a lot easier to just read that one sentence.”

FacebookTwitterPinterest
Naana Agyei-Ampadu, Rhashan Stone and Nicola Hughes in Fairview at the Young Vic.
Photograph: Marc Brenner
Advertisement

But the silence, says Sibblies Drury, is “not for plot reasons. It’s not like you find
out that someone was dead the whole time. I think that it’s more allowing oneself
the ability to have your own experience watching something. The way that people
process things is a really individual thing, and experience is individual in terms of
your upbringing, in terms of your class, in terms of your race, in terms of the
people that you’ve been friends with, the books that you’ve read, your references.”

Latif agrees. “Theatre is not film, or TV, or Netflix. It’s a live art form. If you come
to this show, knowing too much about it, you’re not having a live experience.
You’ve in some way already processed what it’s about. So I think there’s
something about encouraging you to have a live experience from minute zero to
minute 100. Just come and have a collective, communal life experience, and then
at the end, you can process it.”

Latif herself did not watch Fairvew before agreeing to direct it. She and Kwame
Kwei-Armah, artistic director of the Young Vic, were looking for plays. “He went
to New York and called me on his way back, ‘I’ve just seen this play, and you need
to have read it by the time I land.’ I really strongly didn’t want to do an African
American play, because I was conscious I’d done quite a number of them. I
wanted to find something that felt close to me. But then I read it and was like,
‘Oh, but it is!’ I think it reaches beyond an African American experience towards a
black experience, or an ‘othered’ experience.”

FacebookTwitterPinterest
Donna Banya in Fairview. Photograph: Marc Brenner

She continues: “I thought [Kwame] was asking if we should programme it. I was
like, ‘Obviously’, and he goes, ‘Well, do you want to direct it?’ I was like… yes,
trick question. Then I just had to do the small job of persuading this woman.” She
wrote a letter explaining her reasons for wanting to direct Fairview. “When I was
first told of your interest, I was a little bit afraid that it was like …” Sibblies Drury
trails off. “The only two black kids in the class, so they have to date each other.
You know what I mean? … But you were like, ‘I’m black, you’re black. But that’s
not the only reason that I should direct this play.’ And I was like, ah, I am
refreshed.”
Sign up for Bookmarks: discover new books in our
weekly email
Read more

At the time, the off-Broadway production of Fairview gained a lot of buzz. But
since then Fairview has shifted from “well-received” to “most recent winner of
the Pulitzer prize for drama”. “Every play that I’ve ever done has sort of been
about managing people’s disappointments in a way where they don’t feel
disappointed at the end,” Sibblies Drury says. “That feels particularly true of this.
Because I feel some people are going to come in and be like, ‘Oh, this has won a
fancy award. This must be a fancy experience.’ And they’re going to come and be
like, ‘What?’”

Latif says that the play’s ideas are so complex that “in a way, the fourth act is
what happens to you afterwards. How you process it. And I’m totally happy for
there to be intellectual backlash. That’s cool, because that’s a conversation. I’m
terrified of things that are universally lauded, I feel like that’s a full stop.”

For now, keeping information about Fairview to a minimum is possible. But at

some point, just like Death of a Salesman or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the Pulitzer-
winning title will mean more, and more people will find out about the play’s plot.
Can Sibblies Drury imagine Fairview being produced regularly, for decades to
come? She pauses. “No. I hope not. I think it’s a hard play to do well. Also to me,
it feels like its shelf life isn’t going to be very long. Hopefully, because of society. I
do hope that part of the charm of the show is that it sort of puts together all of
these stereotypes that are so ingrained into our consciousness that we like barely
register them as that any more. And so hopefully pointing out those stereotypes
won’t feel fresh or interesting or new relatively soon. But maybe that’s
optimistic.”
 By Ben Brantley
 June 17, 2018

o
o
o
o
o
o 3

“Fairview,” which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in drama, has reopened at Theater for a New
Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center, in Brooklyn. Here is Ben Brantley’s Jun 17, 2018,
review of the production, which originated at Soho Rep.

Let me give you fair warning on “Fairview,” Jackie Sibblies Drury’s dazzling and ruthless
new play: If you see it — and you must — you will not be comfortable.

That’s not because the seats at Soho Rep, where this extraordinary show opened on
Sunday night, are any harder or lumpier than those of most small, downtown theaters.
But you will undoubtedly be squirming in yours.

You will also wind up questioning your basic right to sit there, especially if, like the
majority of New York theatergoers, you are a white person. And some time after the
show has ended, when you’re thinking straight again, you’ll realize just how artfully you
have been toyed with before the final kill, as the mouse to one canny cat of a play.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story

Directed with disarming smoothness and military precision by Sarah Benson, “Fairview”
begins amicably enough, or so it would appear. What occurs in its protracted first scene
isn’t all that different from a standard-issue sitcom episode of, say, the mid-to-late
1980s.

A middle-class, impeccably coifed and made-up mom, Beverly Fraser (Heather Alicia
Simms), is anxiously preparing for a party in her fastidiously appointed, beige-on-beige
home. It’s her formidable mother’s birthday, and Beverly wants everything to be perfect.

 Unlock more free articles.

Create an account or log in

But her loving husband, Dayton (Charles Browning); their teenage daughter, Keisha
(MaYaa Boateng); and especially Beverly’s officious sister, Jasmine (Roslyn Ruff), aren’t
being very helpful. Will the carrots be peeled and cooked, the cake baked and the table
set as it should be before grandma, who is upstairs, makes her entrance?
Sounds like a snooze, doesn’t it? Still, you may detect an occasional tear — so small it
barely lets light through — in the glossy expositional blandness. For instance, the music
Beverly has on melts and mutates for a microsecond; every now and then, the
expression on her face turns lost and wary; and the geography of the characters’
entrances and exits feels strangely illogical, when you think about it.
Editors’ Picks

Tina Brown on the Future of the Royal Family

 What I Spent to Adopt My Child

The Classic Novel That Saw Pleasure as a Path to Freedom

Continue reading the main story

 ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story

And that, really, is all I can say about what happens in “Fairview,” at least without
spoiling one of the most exquisitely and systematically arranged ambushes of an
unsuspecting audience in years. Oh, I do need to mention that the Fraser family is black.
Image

MaYaa Boateng, as a restless high school student, with Roslyn Ruff (in background) as her aunt
in the play, which has elements of a family comedy, but it so much more.Credit...Emon Hassan
for The New York Times

I know, I know. That distinction is immaterial in the 21st century, at least in reference to
what appears to be a kind of every-person generic comedy.

Yeah, right. And I have a miracle diet I’d like to sell you.

Ms. Drury has been a playwright to watch for several years now, with intellectually
probing, form-questioning works that include “Really” and “We Are Proud to Present …”
But nothing she has done previously has prepared audiences for “Fairview,” starting
with a title whose resonance fully registers only after the play is over.

Examined element by element, “Fairview” presents nothing theatrically new. Many of its
tools of subversion date to the early days of the Absurdists and the mind games of
Pirandello and Ionesco, while others — more technologically sophisticated — are staples
of the contemporary European avant-garde.

But Ms. Drury and Ms. Benson have assembled vintage ingredients with a purposeful,
very American ingenuity that restores the shock value to such classic audience baiting.
And I found myself thinking that this must be what it was like to come upon the work of
Edward Albee — the tutelary deity of the theater of discomfort — Off Broadway in the
early 1960s.

“Fairview” is structured as a series of perspective-altering surprises, and they keep

coming at you even when you think its creators must surely have emptied their bag of
tricks. You begin watching by feeling mildly amused, then uneasy, then annoyed, then
unsettled. And then abruptly you’re free-falling down a rabbit hole, and there’s no safe
landing in sight.

This sustained act of sabotage is realized by an impeccably synced team. As the artistic
director of Soho Rep, where she staged Sarah Kane’s “Blasted” and Branden Jacobs-
Jenkins’s “An Octoroon,” Ms. Benson is a past master of the drama of disruption, and
she is at the top of her game here.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story

Every aspect of “Fairview” has a slyly manipulative raison d’être. That includes Mimi
Lien’s tidily framed set, with its invisible mirror of a fourth wall; Montana Levi Blanco’s
increasingly outrageous costumes; and the “gotcha!” lighting (by Amith Chandrashaker)
and sound (Mikaal Sulaiman).

But don’t underestimate the importance of Ryan Courtney’s props, which assume
alarmingly multifarious roles, and Raja Feather Kelly’s choreography. Dancing is a big
part of “Fairview,” but it isn’t there for entertainment purposes, or not for long, anyway.

As for the ensemble — which also includes Hannah Cabell, Natalia Payne, Jed Resnick
and Luke Robertson — it does exactly what the play requires of it, which is saying
something. The women, especially, inhabit their artificially constructed roles with an in-
the-moment immediacy, only marginally rimmed with unease.

Playing the youngest family member, Ms. Boateng also winds up with the heaviest
acting duties, and she executes them with unblinking, confrontational clarity. “Isn’t she
cute?” a part of you may say when her Keisha bounds onto the stage. You will be
punished for ever having thought so.

As you may have inferred, “Fairview” is all about race, and especially about how white
people look at black people. More broadly, you might argue, it’s about the defective
lenses through which we view one another and the world around us. But, no, it’s all
about race.
It may seem untoward to suggest that anything good is emerging from the ethnically
dis-United States at this frightening juncture in its history. But it’s worth remarking that
racial alienation and division have been the basis for the most exciting American plays
of recent years, including “An Octoroon” and Scott R. Sheppard and Jennifer
Kidwell’s “Underground Railroad Game.”

“Fairview” is a galvanizing addition to this gallery. It is also a glorious, scary reminder of

the unmatched power of live theater to rattle, roil and shake us wide awake.
 Fairview: Will Gompertz reviews the Pulitzer Prize-winning play at
London's Young Vic ★★★★☆

Will GompertzArts editor@WillGompertzBBCon Twitter

 7 December 2019
 Share this w ith Facebook

 Share this w ith Mes senger

 Share this w ith Tw itter

 Share this w ith Email

 Share

Related Topics

 Pulitzer Prizes
A friend was mulling over whether or not to buy a ticket to see Jackie Sibblies Drury's Pulitzer Prize-
winning play Fairview at the Young Vic in London (its sell-out run had been extended). She asked me
what I thought of the play. I said it was impactful. She said, so is a punch in the face.

I paused.

Maybe impactful was the wrong word.

It's certainly an awkward, ugly, uncomfortable word. Maybe, then, it was exactly the right word for a play that
sets itself up as a comedy, but is actually a powerful polemic about race.
Was the play fun? Not really.

Was it entertaining? In parts, but it was also annoying and confusing: absurd, even.

Was it impactful? Yes, it was. In fact, it lands some blows so hefty and memorable that there were moments
when it did feel like being punched in the face.

I, for one, came away feeling dazed and confused.

Did I like the play? Did I hate it? Did it work? Or, was it a near-miss? These are questions to which I still do
not have answers.
ADVERTISEMENT

Ads by Teads

What I am sure about, though, is Fairview is an important, provocative, mind-altering work of art, the like of
which I have never seen in the theatre before.

It starts out conventionally enough.

We are in the bourgeois home of a black, middle-class American family. Beverly (Nicola Hughes) is peeling
carrots for a celebratory birthday meal for her elderly mother, who is resting upstairs. There is music playing.
Beverly is singing along while her husband, Dayton (Rhashan Stone), pops in and out, doing his bit here and
there.
Image copyrightMARC BRENNERImage captionLeft to right: Jasmine (Naana Agyei-Ampadu) with her
brother-in-law Dayton (Rhashan Stone) and sister Beverly (Nicola Hughes) in a happier moment

Enter Jasmine (Naana Agyei-Ampadu), Beverly's opinionated sister, who immediately turns an atmosphere
that was already simmering with tension, up a notch or two.

Dayton can't be a good lover, she tells her sister high-handedly; it's obvious from the awkward way he "walk
around like his balls all heavy."

Dayton's response is to offer Jasmine a nibble from the cheese tray, a gracious act at which she turns up her
nose, and announces grandly that she no longer eats dairy.

Into this family gathering arrives Keisha (Donna Banya), Beverly and Dayton's gifted teenage daughter, who is
doing very well at school but wants to take a gap year before going to college, which is against her mother's
wishes.
Image copyrightMARC BRENNERImage captionDonna Banya plays talented but troubled daughter Keisha

And there you have it, a sit-com type set-up with lots of banter and some amusing sight gags. Theatre doesn't
get more comfortable or conservative than this, with Jasmine posing upstage in front of an imaginary mirror,
and Beverly hiding Dayton's old beer bottle behind a sofa cushion. I mean, it couldn't be more tame.

But then, as Jim Thompson, a 20th Century American writer of crime fiction once said: "there is only really
one plot: things are not what they seem."

And that is the case with Fairview. Act II and Act III take the homely Act I between their teeth like a starving
Rottweiler dog, and break its neck in a thousand places.

The theatrical fourth wall that Jasmine made such a fuss about accentuating when looking into the mirror in
Act I, is not so much broken as smashed to smithereens with a sledgehammer, leaving shards of its imaginary
glass all over the auditorium.

You see, this is not a play about a birthday party, even a Pinteresque one with all its menacing overtones.
Fairview is about something else altogether.

It is not a traditional play operating within the confines of a stage framed by a proscenium arch. It is
Shakespearian in scope. All the theatre's the stage, and all the men and women in it merely players.

Image copyrightMARC BRENNERImage captionSuze (Esther Smith in the striped top during rehearsal) tells
her "granddaughter" Keisha, "I was your age once"

I won't divulge more - you'll find out if you go. But what I can say without risking spoilers, is the play's true
subject is how white people watch black people perform and the effect that has on both parties. It is, to use a
fancy term, about the white gaze.

As an art fan, I was familiar with the "male gaze", which is a pejorative term to describe the privileged position
male viewers have been given in art. Put simply, the game has been rigged for their benefit: images are
produced for the male gaze, most obviously in the genre of the female nude.

Jackie Sibblies Drury, Fairview's 37-year old black playwright, describes the "white gaze" in theatre as the
effect a predominately Caucasian audience has on black performers, making the actors feel an otherness, while
at the same time being expected to conform to racial stereotypes.
Image copyrightMARC BRENNERImage captionL-R: Jackie Sibblies Drury (playwright), who won the 2019
Pulitzer Prize for Fairview, seen watching a rehearsal with Tom Scutt (designer) and Nadia Latif (director)

As with the male gaze, the white gaze is about inequality and privilege: how those subjected to it are
diminished while the empowered beneficiaries remain blindly, smugly, oblivious.

Far from being a conservative play, Fairview is a radical, conceptually bold piece of theatre that toys with form
like a cat plays with a mouse. Tropes and clichés are mischievously subverted, as are the limits of what theatre
should be. There's a surreal humour evident throughout, which starts as a knowing wink before becoming
increasingly dark and aggressive.

It's a week since I saw it and I still don't know what to make of Fairview, an intentionally divisive play with
contemporary concerns centred around surveillance and identity politics at its heart.

I can't say I enjoyed it, but I will never forget it. And I'm lucky I had the chance to see such a remarkable work
of art, which made me think differently about theatre.
It is difficult to sum up with a star rating, but easy to do so in a word, which is "impactful."