Face Off Theatre Company’s most recent production brings the work of American playwright Lynn Nottage to the stage in a streamed production that was available through last Sunday.
Nottage’s social satire, Fabulation, or the Re-education of Undine, presents the story of Undine, an African American businesswoman who must return to her Brooklyn roots after her business fails, her husband absconds with her money, and she becomes pregnant.
Nottage, whose plays include Pulitzer Prize winners Ruined and Sweat, often focuses on disaffected characters. In “Fabulation,” this includes illegal drug vendors, junkies in recovery, prisoners, and to her great surprise, Undine herself.
As she sits on the stoop of her family home, broke and expecting a child, Undine is forced to confront uncomfortable truths about her upbringing, the tales she told herself about her rise to professional success, and her illusions about love and romance.
This unexpected homecoming is the point at which fantasy meets reality in Nottage’s play. It offers many opportunities for humor, satire, realization, and reconciliation in the life of Undine. Unfortunately, the poor audio of the recording, not of the production itself, kept many of these opportunities in Nottage’s script from being realized for the online audience.
In the streaming production I saw on last Friday, the audio quality throughout much of the live recording of this staged production was unintelligible.
Despite admirable energy and commitment from the performers, and the fact that the actors spoke clearly and enunciated their lines, I could not understand much of what was said and recorded onstage in the theatre. Echoes accounted for some of the difficulty. Microphone placement also played a role since the lines of performers closer to the audience were more clearly rendered than those of performers upstage.
But some scenes did survive these technical difficulties. In them, the actors were able to connect with each another and the audience. One such moment occurred when Undine, played by Khadijah Brown, reunites with her chair-bound Grandma, played by Zaynee Hobdy. Here, as Undine is sent out to buy street corner heroin for her Grandmother’s drug problem, she ironically observes that it was Grandma who chided her for smoking “the herb” back in the day.
After Undine is busted for her illegal purchase, Brown’s character is confronted by a vocally aggressive inmate, also played by Hobdy. Brown displays appropriate surprise mixed with dismay as she finds it within herself to apologize. At rock bottom, her character must acknowledge her own pride as well as her prejudice toward those she previously viewed as beneath her. Through this encounter, Brown prepares the way for Undine to reclaim both her humanity and identity.
Another key event in Undine’s journey is her connection with Lance, played by Jerome M. Jones, a member of Undine’s court-ordered recovery group. Jones’ portrayal of an addict who wants to get clean is direct and quietly compelling. His honest profession of love, as Undine begins labor contractions, is both poignant and ironic. On the verge of delivery, Undine is asked to embrace the life-changing decision of letting herself be loved, recognizing her new-found self-worth.
Director Ynika Yuag’s staging for the video portion of the streaming is thankfully not burdened with the technical difficulties that plague the recording’s audio. Yuag choses interesting and dynamic angles that reveal character relationships and allow the production to flow seamlessly between flashbacks and present-day action. Although masks are not worn in performance, social distance is maintained between actors. This actually enhances many of the interactions between the characters.
Hopefully, Face Off Theatre Company can overcome audio recording obstacles for streaming in the future so the quality of writing and the performances in productions like Fabulation can be fully appreciated.