There are many incredible ingredients at work with the Los Angeles premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury‘s 2019 Pulitzer Prize winning drama Fairview, now playing at Rogue Machine Theatre: a crackling ensemble cast, an intriguing and twisty premise, and a thrilling direction by Oz Scott. But despite these elements present, the play fall short of its clever ambitions as it settles into an abstract moral message play written primarily for white people.

At the Frasier household, preparations for Grandma’s birthday party are underway. Beverly is holding on to her sanity by a thread to make sure this party is perfect, but her sister can’t be bothered to help, her husband doesn’t seem to listen, her brother is MIA, her daughter is a teenager, and maybe nothing is what it seems in the first place.

Judging from its premise, Fairview appears to be a family comedy/drama/dramedy. At first. So before I go right into spoiler-ridden territory as this review will mostly dissect the script, I will dish out several key positive factors that worked which is the terrific ensemble cast (Marie-Françoise Theodore, Marco Martinez, iesha m. daniels, Jasmine Ashanti, Tyler Gaylord, Michael Guarasci, Daisy Tichenor, and Gala Nikolic with casting directing credit to Victoria Hoffman), a firm and most excellent direction by Oz Scott, and the continued success of Rogue Machine Theatre putting out ambitious plays with very large ideas & themes. Because from there, I’m going right into the many, many problems of the script.

The play starts out as a sitcom and for the first part, all the comedic writing elements are wonderfully in place with the actors playing the family (Marie-Francoise Theodore, Marco Martinez, iesha m. daniels, and Jasmine Ashanti) knocking it out of the park with their most excellent comedic timing and talent. When the mother character of Beverly (Marie-Francoise Theodore) collapses onto the stage, the play no longer becomes a sitcom and switches into one of the most fascinating yet also excruciatingly long experiences I’ve ever had as the play resets itself to the beginning and the family re-enacting the entire first part. But this time, there is a off-stage voiceover performance from Tyler Gaylord, Michael Guarasci, Daisy Tichenor, and Gala Nikolic that talks throughout the entire time in what can only be described as “white people gone racist crazy” that goes on for way, waaaaaaaay too long. It also can’t help receiving comparisons with the 2017 social commentary horror film Get Out as we listen to four white actors drone on and on about their secret desires in which global majority ethnicity they want to change into and eventually reveal they are observing the Black family onstage in what appears to be an experiment.

And when these four white actors do actually show up on stage, there is a range of emotions I felt from shock to hesitant bewildered amusement watching them play out the most outrageous Black stereotypes. While the character of Keisha (iesha m. daniels) acknowledges this and watches in horror with these white people taking on the roles of her other family members & school friend mentioned earlier who would be coming to the birthday party, the play never gets into why only Keisha is able to see the jarring reality issue. But the script says she’s the only who can and as the white actors play into the shock value of Black stereotypes on speed, the play furiously turns into absurd chaos with a food fight scene that was undeniably hilarious to watch.

It is at this point Keisha breaks the fourth wall and specifically addresses all the white audience members to come onstage, which was pretty much most of the audience in the opening night. As the white folks came onto the stage, the daughter then delivers an impassioned yet meandering monologue of trying to claim space that literally has white people crammed into it. By going for the empowerment message route, I felt incredibly disappointed that the playwright chose to end the play with a moral message as opposed to directly addressing the absurd sci-fi tilt chaos. I often find that plays that end in a fourth-wall breaking scenario don’t quite know how to properly deliver the end so instead they go for the route of addressing the audience in a “what does it all mean?” finale. Even worse, this play goes for the white guilt angle that will make many of the white liberal audience members to feel bad about themselves and probably do absolutely nothing by the time they exit the theatre.

What was the point of this whole play then? While there were certainly many ambitious elements at work, it ends in an abstract whimper that made me puzzled why this won a Pulitzer Prize in the first place. Was it the absurdity and playing somewhat “hard” into the white guilt? I only say somewhat because if the fourth wall must be broken, if the white audience members are to be brought onstage, and if Keisha yearns for having her own space, then why didn’t she tell them to leave the stage and have her reclaim the space for herself and family? Instead it ends on a feel-good emotional manner where instead of directly addressing the problem to the white audience members, it lets them off too easy.

But I shouldn’t be surprised because after all, even to this day, most of the plays put up about global majority folks tend to focus on their oppression or hyper-focused on their culture and ethnicity. Considering that the vast majority of theatre spaces are occupied by white people, these plays are often the only kinds that get produced while plays that tend to have universal themes or premises still are usually played and directed by white people. This is certainly not a knock on Rogue Machine Theatre (although most of their plays do tend to be white oriented) and definitely not on this play’s director or their incredibly talented cast but a lingering question into the U.S. theatre world and our society in general.

Fairview does come with some recommendations to check out but solely for the cast and for the first fantastic part of the show. Because after that, this play strangely feels dated being written in the pre-2020 era and even more so now when our current administration has forced many white people to reckon with the harsh truth that the rot of American racism and imperialism has never gone away, it was just left festering underneath the surface and is now out in full view. The play goes on 8pm Fridays, Saturdays, Mondays; 2pm Sundays through April 19 (no performances on March 16, April 13). It contains adult language, loud noises, and strobe lights. You can buy tickets here. Rogue Machine is located at the Matrix Theatre on 7657 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90046.