Skip to main content
Lynn Nottage’s FABULATION 
OR, THE RE-EDUCATION OF UNDINE

Fables and fairy tales are supposed to end happily when the poor little girl meets a handsome prince who whirls her away to a magic kingdom etc.
Fabulation tells that story backwards.  
Felicia Curry is Undine, the princess at the top of her own public relation firms in Manhattan…She has it all!… until  one by one, the threads of this life start to unravel.  Her  husband has spent all her money and is wanted by the FBI.  Bankrupt and pregnant, she goes back to the only place left where she started with her family in Brooklyn.
At a fast clip,  a fine cast of actors  appear and re-appear, in different roles. 
Aakhu TuahNera Freeman is her doped up wheel chaired Grandma as well an inmate Undine shares a jail cell with after she is arrested for trying to buy Grandma some drugs on the street corner.
Roz White is her mother and also some of her girl friends.   William T. Newman, Jr is her father who keeps hoping  for his lucky break  —also a Yoruba Priest, who performs traditional rites.  
Kevin E. Thorne II wear uniforms —first  as FBI Agent Duval, and then as her brother Flow who works as a security guard and is writing a very long endless work about Brer Rabbit.  
 Lauryn Simone is Stephie her assistant,  whom she bossed around and later meets mopping the floor in a drug store. James Whalen is her accountant who recommends she sees that Yoruba Priest (who was his roommate in college),  and he is also a professor in rehab.  
The complicated stories of Undine’s  past deeds unfold, and are wound together with concept of Sankofa (“go back and fetch it” ),  the Yoruban Deity Elegba,  European  tales of the water nymph Undine,  a nod to Edith Wharton who named a character Undine, and African American folklore  of   Brer Rabbit. 
Deemed magical realism, Fabulation is filled with the  real magic of  humans. While the show elicits sparks of laughter, its message is quite serious. The lesson like any beloved tale, well worth repeating, in this show well worth seeing.
Oh yes, Carlos Saldana as Herve, her cheating husband who starts this story, will return at the end as Guy, whom she meets in rehab.  There will be a happy ending or maybe a new beginning!
AT MOSAIC THEATER COMPANY until  September 22, 2019


Popular posts from this blog

  Once is here again!   The Brooklyn Gallery Players reach into the treasure chest of great musicals to bring Once alive and on stage in Brooklyn (until to December 17, 2023). Director Mark Gallagher , and Music Directors David Fletcher and Brendon McCray have crafted a vibrant production, seamlessly integrating the 15 member cast in roles  as both actors and musicians. Set in Dublin, the  formula for the poignant love triangle  is simple. Patrick Newhart  plays Guy, an Irish musician who has given up  on love as he sings the award winning classic  Falling.  Newhart mastered the bombastic busking guitar style and performed each of his songs with intensity and passion Sophie Smith-Brody  is Girl,  a Czech woman  who will inspire him to try again both in  love and with music. Smith-Brody performed each of her disparate songs with aplomb,  from the opening classical piece to her plaintive solos – If You Want Me and The Hill.  The performance starts  with an “ impromptu”  p
Read more
               TINA - THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL  at The National Theatre              In the 1970s, I  had spent weeks climbing around ruins in Peru.  I heard music of the Andes all over.  I  was  finally at  Machu Picchu to spend the night so I could get up early  and climb to see the sunrise from the top of the ruins.   As I got to steps by the gatekeepe,  I could hear his boom box blaring across the Andes “I Wanna Take You Higher”  by Tina Turner.   You don’t have to go climbing the Andes to hear her songs — Tina-The Tina Turner Musical  isright here  at the National Theatre, Washington DC,  until  Oct. 23, 2022.    The show has broken all records with the awards it has received since in premiered in April 2018 in London.  No one questions that Tina is a musical legend but  for this show  accolades to  the stars Naomi Rodgers and Zurin Villanueva who alternate in the  spectacular role.   At every performance there will be people  who remember seeing Tina “back when” and
Read more
  Sarah Ruhl’s Orlando — sparkling wit and ageless wisdom —   at   Constellation Theatre — gone but not forgotten In Virginia Woolf’s Orlando A Biography ,  the eponymous hero undergoes many changes over the centuries— from roles in society and relationships to sex change.  Since the time travel gender bending work was published in 1928, this his/her story has continued to undergone adaptions to its original form, from analytical scholarly critiques to crowd pleasing  movies and stage plays.  Constellation Theatre Company continued  the tradition with its amazing presentation of Sarah Ruhl’s narrative play Orlando .    Five actors  take on dozens of roles as characters or in the  chorus to keep the story at its rapid pace,  condensing events spanning almost five centuries into 100 minutes.   Orlando (Mary Myers) is  ever the aristocrat whether as a page in the court of  Queen Elizabeth I (Alan Naylor)  or involved with a mysterious Russian princess (Edmee - Marie Faal) or pursued
Read more