Jackie Sibblies Drury\u2019s 2018 drama \u201cFairview,<\/a> which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize the following year, is a shape-shifting work that eludes an audience\u2019s assumptions at every turn.<\/p>\n The play is divided into acts that I think of as movements \u2014 each distinct segment radically altering our perception of what has come before. The theatergoer who walked out in the middle of the first movement last weekend in the play\u2019s L.A. premiere run at the Matrix Theatre left with a false impression of the work. <\/p>\n This Rogue Machine production, directed by stage and screen veteran Oz Scott, may struggle with the slipperiness of Drury\u2019s writing. The dramatic construction, however, is solid enough to withstand some of the overly broad strokes of the staging. <\/p>\n The play begins in the mode of a Black sitcom, but this is an elaborate ruse for a theatrical dissection of the subjects of race, representation, spectatorship and control. Don\u2019t mistake the play\u2019s opening facade for what is in fact an intricate and multi-layered performance work. <\/p>\n Marie-Fran\u00e7oise Theodore, left, and Marco Martinez in \u201cFairview\u201d at Rogue Machine.<\/p>\n (Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n In classic television comedy fashion, we are welcomed into the home of Beverly (Marie-Fran\u00e7oise Theodore), who is in a frenzy preparing a birthday dinner for her mother. Everything has to be perfect, yet nothing seems to be going right.<\/p>\n Dayton (Marco Mart\u00ednez), her loving husband, would rather get snuggly than be conscripted into her catering army. Her sister, Jasmine (Jasmine Ashanti), a wild card auntie, arrives with wine and a saucily uncooperative attitude. Keisha (iesha m. daniels), an overachieving high school senior, has news that she knows is going to upend her mother. <\/p>\n The elements are in place for a middle class retread of \u201cThe Cosby Show.\u201d But something in the presentation seems askew. When I saw the world premiere production at Berkeley Rep (a collaboration with Soho Rep, where the play had its debut), I was tantalized by the way the sitcom was subtly placed in italics. <\/p>\n Sarah Benson\u2019s pitch-perfect direction made the most of Mimi Lien\u2019s perspective-altering living room set, forcing audience members to question the lens through which they were viewing the stage action. <\/p>\n In the play\u2019s second movement, Drury pulls the carpet out from under everyone with a conversation of unseen viewers discussing what it would be like to be another race. This fantasy chat plays out in all its white cluelessness as the sitcom rewinds and repeats on mute.<\/p>\n Marco Martinez, from left, Marie-Francoise Theodore, Jasmine Ashanti and iesha m. daniels in \u201cFairview\u201d at Rogue Machine.<\/p>\n (Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n What in the world is going on? Part of the pleasure of experiencing \u201cFairview\u201d for the first time is not understanding the rules of the game. Theatergoers have to improvise their own interpretive strategies as the play shifts and shifts again.<\/p>\n Those opinionated voices fantasizing about what it would be like to be Black, Latino or Asian invade the family comedy just at the point where things left off at the end of the first movement, after a series of mishaps causes Beverly to faint. <\/p>\n The grandmother, who has stubbornly remained in her room upstairs, finally makes her grand entrance. But the odd thing is that she\u2019s neither Black nor old. She\u2019s played by Suze (Daisy Tichenor), who was one of the more self-consciously liberal voices reluctantly participating in the sport of racial tourism.<\/p>\n The less scrupulous voices also invade Beverly\u2019s meticulous household like bulls in a suburban china shop. Jimbo (Tyler Gaylord) impersonates Beverly\u2019s late-arriving lawyer brother as though he were a rap star ready to make TMZ headlines. Mack (Michael Guarasci), exuberantly crossing race and gender, plays Keisha\u2019s friend who arrives with a pregnancy test that ushers in a plotline that Keisha feels helpless to reject. And then Bets (Gala Nikoli\u0107), a Slavic-sounding grand diva with little regard for American-style identity politics, challenges Suze for the right to play the grandmother \u2014 in a far less restrained manner. <\/p>\n Jasmine Ashanti, left, and Tyler Gaylord in \u201cFairview\u201d at Rogue Machine.<\/p>\n (Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n I won\u2019t spoil how the play proceeds but it doesn\u2019t so much conclude as combust. Keisha is the only character on stage who doesn\u2019t understand why these strangers are pretending to be family members. She\u2019s also disgusted by the way they\u2019re imposing ludicrous scenarios that don\u2019t have anything to do with the actual identities of her family members. <\/p>\n Drury (\u201cMarys Seacole,\u201d<\/a> \u201cWe Are Proud to Present…\u201d<\/a>), one of the most innovative American playwrights working today, sets in conceptual, layered motion what it\u2019s like to be in a Black body surrounded at all times by the white gaze. \u201cFairview\u201d challenges the spectator\u2019s authority to determine meaning. The play subverts itself, never allowing an audience to gain a commanding foothill, even at the end when (suffice it to say) the watchers become the watched.<\/p>\n Anyone who reads \u201cFairview\u201d will understand the challenge of producing it, but I don\u2019t think I fully appreciated how much stylistic nuance is in play. The problem with Rogue Machine\u2019s production is one of calibration. The sitcom is played not in italics but in neon. (The fault isn\u2019t with the actors, all of whom are excellent, but with the exaggerated tone that has been set for them.) <\/p>\n The voice-over exchange on racial identity is played as obvious parody \u2014 the satire screaming its head off in case anyone should question the play\u2019s point of view. I\u2019m grateful that Rogue Machine has brought \u201cFairview\u201d to Los Angeles. But I\u2019m not sure that I would have thought as highly of the play had this been my first experience of it.<\/p>\n Michael Guarasci, from left, Gala Nikolic, Daisy Tichenor, iesha m. daniels, Marco Martinez and Tyler Gaylord in the Los Angeles premiere of \u201cFairview\u201d at Rogue Machine. <\/p>\n (Jeff Lorch)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n \u201cFairview\u201d is as much a performance work as a play. Subsequent productions are never going to have the same coordination between playwright and theatrical interpreters as the world premiere.<\/p>\n Still, Keisha\u2019s final monologue is devastating in its plea for perceptual equity, and daniels\u2019 performance grounds the play in something urgently human. The heightened nature of Gaylord\u2019s and Nikoli\u0107\u2019s performances, off-putting in the voice-over scene, are a blast when the worlds of the play finally merge. And Ashanti\u2019s self-adoring Jasmine steals every scene where she\u2019s front and center, a nonnegotiable requirement of her character.<\/p>\n Mark Mendelson\u2019s scenic design, more elaborate than most Rogue Machine offerings, doesn\u2019t achieve the oblique effect of the original production but sets the stage in vivid detail. The food fight that explodes in the play\u2019s third movement is conducted with comestibles so rubbery they might be part of a clown show. But it\u2019s clear at this point that what we\u2019re watching is meant to be understood as a flagrant simulation. <\/p>\n Drury wants us to question not only our eyes but our paradigms for viewing. And on that score, \u201cFairview,\u201d even in a somewhat cloudy production, succeeds magnificently. <\/p>\n![\"Marco](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/c5da147\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2560x1707+0+0\/resize\/320x213!\/format\/webp\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fad%2Fe1%2Fc17b7a814d978c198e49d6a695a9%2Fmarco-martinez-marie-francoise-theodor-e-jasmine-ashanti-iesha-m-daniels-scaled.jpg)
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<\/picture>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/6f054ed\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2560x1707+0+0\/resize\/320x213!\/format\/webp\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F32%2F61%2F4ef42f0c44808159b6c4d70cf6db%2Fmichael-guarasci-gala-nikolic-daisy-tichenor-iesha-m-daniels-marco-martinez-tyler-gaylord-scaled.jpg)
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