Jackie Sibblies Drury’s absurdly brilliant Fairview, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama this year, seriously feels like one of those rare ‘you have to see it’ kind of shows. And you really do have to see it, because it’s much better if it’s kept spoiler-free. A bit like The Mousetrap, except it may not appeal to quite so many white people.
It’s no spoiler to say that this boundary-pushing play about racial power structures and storytelling feels like a seminal work that will be discussed for many years to come. It’s an exceptional piece of writing from Sibblies Drury, and combined with director Nadia Latif’s assured, playful staging, it’s unmissable.
What I can say is that it begins by masquerading as a mediocre knockabout comedy about an African-American family preparing for a big family dinner. Beverly (Nicola Hughes) is neurotically peeling carrots, her husband Dayton (Rhashan Stone) is charmingly pretending not to be helpful, and their daughter Keisha (Donna Banya) is asking her aunt Jasmine (Naana Agyei-Ampadu) – who is off dairy – to plead the case for her to have a gap year. Tom Scutt’s design places them in a pristine house - then everything becomes a lot less tidy.
Through dazzling formal innovation, Sibblies Drury smartly destroys the pernicious lie that talking about race only means people of colour. In exploring stifling assumptions, prejudices and anxieties that white people project onto black people, she suggests that even an increasingly representative culture remains trapped within a racist framework. And, above all, how exhausting it is for people of colour to have to keep pointing this out, at the detriment of being able to tell other stories.
Its final moments, which require extreme bravery from Banya as a performer, will be divisive; they put white people in a position most won’t have been in before – in life, let alone a theatre. I don’t know how it feels to experience this show as a person of colour; the fact mainly white people (including myself) will describe it in newspapers almost feels like the play’s fourth act. “You have told me every story I’ve ever heard,” says Keisha at one point; it’s worth reflecting on what that really means.
Beneath all of its formal mastery, Fairview delivers on two of theatre’s simplest purposes: it provokes empathy in the strongest way, and it made me want to talk about it with everyone I know.
Until January 18; youngvic.org
December's best theatre
