Fairview - Young Vic

{Spoiler}
The show is in three parts:

In part 1, a black family interacts in predictable and stereotypical ways, and the temptation is to think the play is a bit crap. But then one of the characters calls out plays of the crap variety you're watching: ie comedy-infused family dramas where difficulties and confrontations play out, tensions rise, but eventually everything's a little bit better than before; and specifically here, the fractious family bond quite a bit through song and dance! If the playwright is so self-aware, you wonder, about the type of play she appears to be writing, what IS going on!!??

In part 2, the answer comes, as the family repeat all their actions of part 1, but miming, while a trivial and racist voice-over panel of white people discuss the action, as well as what race they'd like to be. The white panel are not so overtly racist and hostile that they can be instantly dismissed, but rather are incredibly trivial and inadvertently racist, so that their opinions about what race it would be more fun to be, and concerning the various actions in the play, are more biting for being so unintentionally and casually limiting and hurtful.

It's the white panel, (one of which is an acting favourite of mine, David Dawson, and one of which is an actor who has been growing on me for years, Matthew Needham - and both dazzle here too) who seem to be suggesting that Robert Townsend's "Black Acting School" is still open for business, all these years later, and that this very show may be put on by graduates of that school!

Now, I love watching singing and dancing by anybody, of any race, creed or culture. I loved it in "42nd Street," and I loved it when a bunch a middle aged drunk women were singing and dancing on the train on the way home last night. There's something communal and wonderful about singing and dancing, as a way of humans relating, that beats almost anything else, especially political discussions!

But when the white panel suggest that the singing and dancing in this play, in Part 1, has something to do with the actors' "blackness," that spoils all the fun. Now I'm thinking, is this singing and dancing inauthentic? Is it just a modern form of minstrelsy? Have I been partaking in that? Enjoying that?

I feel angry, and I sink into my chair upset and confused.

And that's the sign of a great play, a play that actually makes you think, and think hard about something!

On the one hand, I'm thinking, of course BAME people should not be depicted as more prone to singing and dancing than white people. On the other hand, I'm thinking, surely everyone should sing and dance, and if that means more depictions of white people singing and dancing to even things up, then that needs to happen, as long as authenticity is the watchword.

And I'm thinking, can this racist white panel be more right about this play than I am?

Whereupon, the play proceeds to destabilise just about everyone and everything in the play, and everyone watching it, to mock everyone and everything: even the heretofore little noticed prop food on the meticulously designed dining room table makes it's presence felt in a most aggressive and surreal way! Jackie Sibblies Drury seems to question everyone's ability to form a "fair view" about anything and everything, including HERSELF!

After all, is she not the one pandering to racial ideas about people more than anyone, by singling out a "white" audience? She must know that the audience is not a singular monstrous mass, but simply a bunch of individuals, whose skin colour would be irrelevant in a fair society, a society without racism.

The second part of the play culminates in a frenzied explosion of activity in which the racist white panel of commentators invade and populate the action! It's an astonishing, exciting and disturbing moment, and this affords Donna Banya, as the family's daughter, to give the most expressive, emotive and affecting performance, as someone who sees through the veil of fiction to feel the racist oppression of this stage invasion, which other actors blithely ignore, accepting these invaders as their (black) family members. Banya's increasing disquietude and horror is akin to that of the protagonist of the iconic race-horror movie, "Get Out," as he realises that there is a creeping racist trap surrounding him. In addition to Banya, I think Naana Agyei-Ampadu is terrific as the "feisty" and "sassy" sister/aunt who brings the noise, who may or may not be a racist stereotype of a black woman, but which performance is peerlessly effective and entertaining regardless.

In the third and last part of the play, something else happens again, to surprise and disturb some more. As someone who likes to imagine myself, when the theatre lights go out, as a genderless, raceless, ageless, empathetic pair of eyes, ready and willing to feel all human experience, this last part seemed to insist that the lights must stay on, and stay bright!