Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine by Lynn Nottage — Review

Afro-American narratives are experiencing a meteoric surge in the proliferation of the modern mainstream liberal white consciousness in the nation, critics will say, and they aren’t wrong. When All Arts circulated playwright Donja R. Love’s “List of Black Theater in New York City,” an alphabetized inventory of some of the most anticipated or under-the-radar stage shows by black storytellers and griots initially published on his Facebook page, the effect was cataclysmic, inspiring similar lists by other underserved and undervalued communities alike. But most exhilarating was the writer’s additional note that 31 of the 55 new works of the 2018-2019 theatre season are by black women and black femmes, which is unprecedented, considering especially how white, homogenized and segregated contemporary theatre is in The Capital of the World.

Enter Lynn Nottage’s 2004 satirical riches-to-rags comedy “Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine,” directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, which receives a long overdue remounting within the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center, kicking off a three-play residency for the storyteller at the acclaimed off-Broadway theater. Nottage, the first and only woman to take home the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice—the first in 2009 for “Ruined,” and the second in 2017 for “Sweat,” both naturalistic tragedies—delivers a, dare I say, family-friendly romp filled to the brim with subtle updated observations on upward mobility and respectability politics that should come with more fanfare than it is unlikely to obtain from theatergoers or middle-of-the-road critics. That’s because often, many of the shows produced for commercial run seem tailored to the white gaze, with a particular caliber of plays being penned with the predilection for black suffering. However, “Fabulation,” a love-note to Nottage’s grandmother and whose target audience is Black women, in particular, creates a joyous farce that mocks both the upper elite and poverty porn with bombast.

The show depicts 37-year-old Undine Barnes Call-es (Cherise Boothe), a high octane black female business executive and head of her own Manhattan boutique publishing firm who seems to be in control, making moves from her high-rise office. Until she discovers, while trying to book a celebrity for the Fallopian Blockage ball, that Hervé, her Argentine husband has embezzled all of her savings and absconded. Body-slammed by a blitz of bad luck, a visit by an FBI agent signals that she’s also being investigated for identity fraud, stating she seems “to have materialized from the ether.” Which, as we find out, is correct: Undine’s real identity is Sharona Watkins, who grew up a Brooklyn public housing project, the product of working-class security guards. Yikes!

Her fall from grace and the public eye are similar to the Book of Job: While Undine is far from a good person (she carelessly expunged her family in a magazine profile, falsely claiming they perished in a fire), her financial ruin causes public shame, forcing her to file for bankruptcy and to return to her parents in Fort Greene. In addition, her security guard brother Flow, a cypher-spitting Iraq war veteran, mocks her when he’s not rhyming about Br’er Rabbit and Uncle Remus; long-lost friends from childhood know nothing of her Dartmouth education or achievements; and she’s sharing sleep quarters with her heroin-addicted grandmother. To make matters worse, during a routine check-up after suffering a severe anxiety attack, Undine’s discovers she’s pregnant and left to wait in the purgatory of a Social Services office with a self-righteous over-the-counter clerk to get welfare. But the cherry on top? After reluctantly agreeing to buy drugs for Grandma, Undine gets arrested and is ordered to join a drug counseling group. A bit of a ham, Undine engineers a tale of deception, fabricating a life of addiction that began with Percocet. There, she meets an optimistic ex-con and recovering addict who admits that just three years prior he was “that brother you cross the street to avoid,” nevertheless his sincerity and genuine empathy are welcomed and even refreshing considering the circumstances. Still, there are reminders of her posh past life: Her self-made gal pal Alison, who reminds her that, “There is nothing less forgiving than Bourgie Negroes,” just before marooning Undine outright; her fashion-forward former assistant is employee of the month at a Duane Reade drugstore and is just as hypercritical as her; and a childhood friend mixes and mingles with the black NYC in-crowd.

.Montana Levi Blanco’s amusing costume designs, which ranged with haute couture designer styles and future Harajuku-esque street fashion to rinky-dink Salvation Army threads, all felt period and sympathetic to the material, and were complimented effortlessly by Cookie Jordan’s fantastic wigs. Director Lileana Blain-Cruz’s dexterous presentation never permits the pacing to halt or slow, aptly interchanging the comedy and the drama with aplomb, which matched perfectly with Adam Rigg’s versatile, quick-change sets. The ensemble was astral-bodied and glittering; with Nikiya Mathis, Mayaa Boateng, J. Bernard Calloway, and Ian Lassiter as the standout. Marcus Callender, Dashiell Eaves, Heather Alicia Simms also star.

At first, many may market Nottage’s play as a sister to most of Tyler Perry’s C.O.G.-flavored entertainment. But tonally, “Fabulation” has more in common with the Wayans brothers’ “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood”; a parody of the legal system and of the genre that exploits oppressed black people, the same people Undine meets in her downfall. But this play is a lot of political than it lets on, undercutting the themes with wit and belly-laugh-inducing humor.




The trick of Nottage’s play is in its title, which may not bode well for the traditional theatre critic; the story may play to some as a beloved, long-lost TV sitcom in the 1990s, like, say, “Roc” or “Living Single,” but the plot device and the protagonist’s journey have more in common with African folktale or magical realism. To earn such a title for a play of this caliber, Nottage would, in turn, have to ‘fabulate,’ or divulge invented fantasy-filled fables, and thus appraise subject matter, style, chronological structure, and the syntheses of both daily life and the fantastical into snapshots that distort conventional peculiarities between highbrow and lowbrow. The award-winning writer does this in copious amounts, achieving her intended goal. Similar to her PR maven protagonist, Nottage’s tries in vain to subvert the fundamental optics of race and womanhood in the modern U.S.A. with a blithely rib-tickling lampoon centralized on black women wrestling with identity in a culture that refuses to receive them on their terms. Undine’s voyage to spiritual rebirth after having to make back-to-back compromised and hazardous alternatives to her situation in order to survive is earned, particularly when she allows herself to be genuinely vulnerable. As the CEO of her own Manhattan boutique PR firm catering to “the vanity and confusion of the African-American nouveau riche,” Undine fashioned herself into the spin-doctor of her wildest dreams, making it her mission to shapeshift the narrative about her and people who look like her. But was her hope to change the narrative for the better or to appease her clientele, and even the white gaze?

“Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine” runs through January 13, 2019, at Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W 42nd St. in New York. For tickets or information, call 212-244-7529 or visit www.signaturetheatre.org