‘Fairview’ Review: An Immersive Self-Reflection Experience

“Fairview,” the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winning drama by Jackie Sibblies Drury, challenges what it means to be a play, an actor, and an audience. But this work is not just an avant-garde experimentation in theater, it is a creative expression of the Black experience in white-dominated spaces and forthright critique of the white gaze.

Director Pascale Florestal brings “Fairview” to Boston with SpeakEasy Stage Company from Feb. 17 through Mar. 11. The production is provocative and pulls its audience into an uncomfortable but inescapable trance at the unpredictable acts that occur onstage.

What begins as a typical family drama in a living room set transforms into a meta-level deconstruction of a white perspective in real time. The opening act focuses on scenes of a Black middle-class family getting ready for their grandmother’s birthday dinner. This, however, is a diversion to the core of the play. In a mind-bending twist, white actors enter the fray, first as voices amplified over the house speakers, and then as characters — Black characters, played by white actors. The effect is outrageous and cringeworthy, but essential to the goals of the play.

Florestal emphasizes the eerie, everpresent white gaze in the play's staging. At the crux of the work when voices come to life, white bodies are seen at the outskirts of the set, peering through an open window, standing in an offset hallway, or peering through a poster dedicated to Harlem. Including the physical representations permits the white audience another chance to self-project, a crucial element of the play’s theme.

Maintaining the secrecy of the plot twist is essential to the play and made possible by convincing performances in the first act. Yewande Odetoyinbo, who plays Beverly, the mother in the family, anchors the first act. Her fluid navigation of stress and authority and overwhelming emotion is captivating and pushes the faux plot forward. Back and forth dialogue with Lyndsay Allyn Cox, who plays Beverly’s sister, Jasmine, captures the petty rivalry and loving interaction of family. Cox embodies Jasmine with the instantly recognizable sarcastic tone of a sarcastic younger sister. Her self-obsessive gestures — fixing her hair or checking herself out — win the audience’s laughter as well.

The unexpected and uneasy nature of the second act due to white actors portraying Black characters, however, imposes new meaning on the performances of the first. The play seemingly restarts, but instead of on-stage dialogue, audiences hear white actors questioning, “If you could be any race, what would you be?” amplified over the speakers. As they make uncomfortable, bigoted statements on race and color, the audience squirms at how relatable the conversation is. Meanwhile, they are forced to reevaluate the events of the first act without the dialogue. Cox’s dramatic physical expression is hardly as comical with the presence of white voices overhead. Perhaps that is the significance of Cox’s character pouring liquor into her wine in the second act, one of the few distinctions in events — the repetition and expression is exhausting, impossible to conquer without a little something to take the edge off.

While the significance of elements may vary from viewer to viewer, the underlying principle challenging the white perception is present from beginning to end. Sound designer James Cannon deserves much credit for this. Lizzo’s “Good As Hell” is the opening track played as Beverly peels the carrots in the first and second act. The moment of transition between on-stage and voiceover is a malfunction on the radio — instead of the studio recording of “Good As Hell,” an alternative rendition by unseen white instrumentalists plays without the bass. This subtle effect foreshadows the entire play in the auditory realm.

Victoria Omoregie’s character, Keisha, brings the high-concept, multidimensional, and overwhelming work back together in a monologue that sets the record straight, acknowledging the absurdity of what has exploded on stage and bringing the conversation off-stage, back to the audience. The recent Boston University graduate commands the room — literally. The final scene is interactive, calling all white audience members to take the actors’ place on stage. Omoregie’s on-stage performance brought in laughs, especially in her interactions with her aunt, Jasmine, but the final monologue is a stunning plea that ends the work with force.

It is impossible to watch “Fairview” without reflecting on one’s own experiences discussing race and color. Leaving the theater, SpeakEasy Stage Company provides an after-program list of questions to discuss the events of the play and offer further reading. It is hard to say that the shock-factor of the show carries the same weight it might have in 2018. Years after a global wave of Black Lives Matter protests and tone shift in media discussions of race, the 2023 audience context has likely undergone race reflections. Even so, as long as “Fairview” runs, it will give its audiences a mirror for self-reflection.

—Staff Writer Jacob R. Jimenez can be reached at jacob.jimenez@thecrimson.com.