“FEFU AND HER FRIENDS”: Theatre Intime has presented “Fefu and Her Friends.” Directed by Kailani Melvin, the play was presented November 21-23 at the Hamilton Murray Theater.Above, from left: Fefu (Kimberlynn Bjurstrom) enjoys a game of chess with Emma (Sophia Raes) — moving pieces around the board, just as the production moves the audience around the building. (Photo by Elena Milliken)
By Donald H. Sanborn III
Fefu and Her Friends is a play that breaks the fourth wall, and moves an audience. This statement is true in a literal, physical sense.
In María Irene Fornés’ 1977 play Fefu, an eccentric woman who lives in a spacious country house with her husband, invites a group of female guests — certain events prove “friends” to be a somewhat curious description of the group — to her home, ostensibly to plan a children’s education fundraiser.
The play is in three parts. In the first and third section, the ensemble is onstage, with the entire audience watching in the auditorium.
For the middle section, the audience is divided into four groups. Each of the four middle scenes is performed in different rooms of the theater building, four times. The groups rotate to the different rooms, until each group has viewed every scene. The effect feels a bit like walking through a living history museum.
Theatre Intime has presented Fefu and Her Friends. Kailani Melvin directs the ambitious, logistically complex production, which transforms multiple sections of the Hamilton Murray Theater into different rooms of Fefu’s house.
Fornés (1930-2018) emigrated from Cuba to the U.S. when she was 15, becoming a citizen in 1951. She became interested in painting at the age of 19; her education in abstract art included studies with painter Hans Hofmann. Fornés’ prolific output as a playwright and director resulted in nine Obie Awards and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Fefu is her 14th play; the premiere was produced by the New York Theatre Strategy at the Relativity Media Lab in New York City.
It is interesting to remember the playwright’s art career when watching Fefu and Her Friends. In this context it can be argued that watching the four middle scenes is like viewing a series of living paintings, moving between works on display in a gallery.
Perhaps in keeping with the play’s three-part structure, B Ireland’s attractive set is a triptych. Two outer sections, clearly designed to indicate an outdoor setting, bookend a living room that is elaborately decorated, in the style of 1930s plays such as You Can’t Take It With You.
The play is set in New England in 1935. In addition to enhancing the outdoor scenes with birdsong and other sounds of nature, Sai Jogannagari’s sound design uses music to aid in establishing the time period.
Fefu (given a spirited portrayal by Kimberlynn Bjurstrom) hosts seven friends to plan a fundraiser connected with education (the precise cause they are supporting is unclear).
In the first segment Fefu, Cindy (Hiva Mirtaleb), and Christina (Sydney Hogan) wait for the other guests to arrive. Fefu describes her relationship with her (offstage) husband Philip, whom she assumes married her to have a “constant reminder of how loathsome women are.” When she sees him approaching the house, she picks up a gun and shoots at him. After Philip falls down, Fefu assures her shocked guests that the gun is loaded with blanks, and this is a longstanding joke between the couple. She brushes aside Philip’s periodic threat to load the gun with real bullets.
Julia (Hannah Bonbright) arrives, confined to a wheelchair. As Fefu shows her to her room, Cindy explains Julia’s backstory to Christina. Julia accompanied Cindy and a man on a hunting trip. The man shot a deer; when it fell, so did Julia. Cindy adds that Julia periodically blanks out due to a scar on her brain.
Fefu’s exuberant theatrical friend Emma (played by Sophia Raes, who gives the production one of its most memorable performances) arrives. So do Paula (Kaydance Rice), Sue (Ela Gebremariam), and Cecilia (Seryn Kim). Julia examines the gun, enigmatically remarks “She’s hurting herself,” and decides to go to her room to lie down.
For the second part, the audiences are assigned their groups via a card stapled to the programs. (This writer is in the “diamond” group.) Our guide leads us down to an area of the Hamilton Murray’s basement, in which Julia’s bed has
been placed.
As Julia, Bonbright gives a performance that has an effective shape; she artfully understates the delivery of her lines in the first and third segments, so that the unsettling monologue she delivers in this middle scene — in which she narrates a hallucination she is experiencing — can be filled with contrasting power. Julia imagines that she has been beaten by a group of “judges” who are responsible for the circumstances surrounding the hunter’s shooting of the deer, and who now want to kill (they say “cure”) Fefu. Julia’s hallucination ends when Sue abruptly brings her a bowl of soup.
Next we are lead to a sitting room across from the auditorium. Christina and Cindy sit on the couch, reading. A self-described “conformist,” Christina admits to Cindy that she finds the resolutely unconventional Fefu’s behavior confusing and slightly threatening. Costume designer Rachel Bejo outfits Christina in a delicate, rather conservative dress. Fefu, by contrast, wears slacks and a blood-red tie — which, likely in a bit of foreshadowing, matches Julia’s dress.
We temporarily return to the auditorium, albeit only the right-hand side, to watch a scene in which Fefu and Emma play chess on the patio. (This departs from a published script, which directs that they are playing croquet. The addition of chess is apt, as the movement of chess pieces nicely echoes the play’s strategic movement of the audience.) In another deviation from the script, Emma invites an audience member — assigned the role of a gardener — to the stage to discuss gardens.
Finally, we are led backstage to view a scene set in the kitchen, in which learn that Paula and Cecilia used to be a romantic couple, but (to Paula’s disappointment) they have not spoken in some time. Paula expresses a hope that they will reconnect, if only as friends. Fefu ends the scene by gingerly placing some dishes — which she holds with visible revulsion — by the sink.
One wishes that the final segment (for which the entire audience returns to their seats) did a bit more to tie together all of the threads that we have seen throughout the building. The women spend most of it practicing their speeches for the fundraiser. Raes makes Emma’s monologue — in which she copiously quotes actor and educator Emma Sheridan Fry (1864-1936) — the charismatic highlight it needs to be.
The sequence also benefits from some of Amilia Hartray’s most effective lighting, which is artfully more “stagey” here, as opposed to the comparatively natural look for the other scenes.
Later, Fefu picks up her gun, saying that she plans to clean it. We hear the sound of a gunshot. Julia touches her forehead; her hand is bloody when she withdraws it. Fefu re-enters carrying a dead rabbit, saying she killed it. Then, as if the puckish Fefu has taken control of the soundboard, we hear Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” (1983), a song unrelated to the play’s time setting.
The somewhat heightened spatial realism that comes from staging scenes in places other than the auditorium has the added effect, perhaps intentionally, of limiting our knowledge of what is happening in the surrounding scenes. At least in this play, Fornés seems to have little use for split scenes that permit an audience to see multiple events simultaneously. The effect feels a bit like wandering from room to room while attending a party whose guests one only knows slightly — or trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle when we only have a vague sense of the completed picture’s appearance.
This staging device is an interesting one, and the production (aside for a few long pauses) generally runs smoothly. Yet it compels us to observe an aesthetic tension: focus on aesthetic issues — attacking conventions of theatrical performance spaces — versus focus on plot, character, and a steady rhythm that carries the drama from beginning to end.
Again, perhaps intentionally, the time spent moving from space to space adds (at least for me) a distracting element; the temptation is to look around the spaces at other audience members (and furniture unrelated to the performance) as well as the actors, adding to the time it takes to refocus on the action. Given that the play by its nature already is a bit disjointed and esoteric, this poses a potential challenge to thorough engagement with the characters and their dialogue.
Nevertheless, much of the audience audibly enjoys the play, particularly several of the actors’ performances. Fefu and Emma are memorable for their larger-than-life personalities, and the script leaves us wanting to know more about the relationship of Cecilia and Paula.
Perhaps the most empowering lesson to extract from the unconventional staging is that most any space in which actors choose to perform can be a venue. Surely this reminder can only benefit the performing arts.
For information about upcoming Theatre Intime productions, visit theatreintime.org.