Fefu and Her Friends, by Maria Irene Fornes, directed by Hope McIntyre, at Ralph Connor House, May 22, 2014
Reviewed by Chandra Mayor
Imagine The Breakfast Club, but with smart and weird adult women instead of clichéd and weird teenagers. And instead of a smelly high school weekend detention setting, convene the characters in a country home where they’re to plan an event together. (And then place yourself in this period estate, too, because this play is staged in various rooms in the gorgeous Ralph Connor House on Westgate). Make it 1935 instead of 1985.
Now imagine that it’s written not by John Hughes, but by the accomplished queer feminist playwright Maria Irene Fornes, the recipient of nine Obie Awards and doyenne of the New York experimental theatre scene. There’s still a great soundtrack of forgotten gems. The characters still alternately laugh, freak out, wander around, argue, ask big questions, and change their minds about each other. Except it’s a lot more interesting – gutsier, more articulate. Oh, and someone ends up dead. It’s The [Feminist] Breakfast Club for grown-ups, and you should go see this play.
The play is set in Fefu’s home, where she gathers with seven other women to coordinate and rehearse a fundraising event in which each plays a part. Fornes wrote the play to be staged in a period home, and the Ralph Connor House is the perfect setting. If you’ve never been inside, this is a marvellous opportunity to experience the house.
The play is in three acts, and for the first and third act the audience watches the scenes unfold in the living room. The second act, however, is split into four scenes in four different rooms in the house; the audience is divided into four groups, and each small group watches a different scene before rotating to the next scene in another room. All the small groups see all of the scenes, but in different chronological order; the play as a whole is concerned with the tensions and relationships between individuality and collectivity, and this structure highlights these dynamics, encouraging the audience to each have a slightly different experience of the play. We move through the house (and even onto the grounds) as the characters do, and find ourselves drawn into their worlds more viscerally than in a traditional theatre; the small groups and the necessary intimacy between actors and audience in each of these small scenes reinforces this feeling. It is not always emotionally comfortable, but that’s part of what makes it compelling.
Hope McIntyre has waited twenty years to direct this play, and her deep engagement with Fornes’s work is evident; in less experienced hands this play could come off as convoluted instead of complex, but she makes it all feel organic, organized by the logic of emotion and intuition instead of the tedious imperatives of narrative.
McIntyre has brought together a marvellous ensemble cast. The eccentric Fefu, played engagingly by Megan McArton, says that she likes exciting ideas because they give her energy, including the things that revolt her, like the slimy (and even dangerous) things underneath rocks. Each character struggles, in her own way, to negotiate complicated and messy interior truths and experiences in a world that only wants to recognize women’s bland, uncomplicated and polished facades and exteriors. Kelci Stephenson is outstanding as Julia (the psychologically fragile Ally Sheedy-ish character), perhaps the most unnerving character, prone to episodes of psychological fracture, the woman who most obviously vocalizes and embodies the impossible judgements and strictures of a patriarchal society and value system. Brenda McLean is the conservative Emilio Estevez-esque Christina, frightened by Fefu’s rebellious energy, attentive to its undercurrents of fear and despair.
Tracey Nepinak shines as the theatrical Emma, and Tracy Penner’s laugh lights up the room (even when her character uses it as a cover for her own feelings of uncertainty). Julia Arkos is commanding as the aloof Cecilia, and Nan Fewchuk adds leaven to the sometimes unstable group. This is a difficult script to work with, sometimes involving lengthy monologues and quick emotional changes; while the timing between some of the actors occasionally falters or stiffens, McIntyre keeps the pace moving.
“Something rescues us from death every moment,” says Julia, speaking with both fear and fervent conviction. Sometimes the life-saving thing that occurs in this moment will not be the thing that saves us in the very next moment, especially in a play that seeks to engage us through the intimacy of emotion and recognition, rather than through an ordered process of reasoning.
While the play itself does follow a narrative structure with a recognizable beginning, middle, and end, the women’s conversations loop around, returning again and again to the themes of voice and agency, drive and purpose, connection and dissolution, corporeality and ideology; with each loop the themes simultaneously acquire depth and destabilize what we thought we knew. It all makes sense the way that a dream makes stubborn, innate sense while you’re dreaming it.
“We as people are guardians to each other when we give love,” Julia continues. This is what these characters try to do for each other, as hopeful and world-weary mature women, rather than as teen misfits. And as mature women, each knows that guardians aren’t infallible, and that love – the giving and receiving of it – is complicated, sometimes unbearably, hopelessly so. In the end, it is the insistent, fierce, and sometimes audacious intelligence of this complex play that might be the life-saving thing, from one moment to the next.
Fefu and Her Friends, by Maria Irene Fornes, presented by Sarasvàti Productions, directed by Hope McIntyre, runs May 22 to June 1, 2014, at Ralph Connor House (University Women’s Club of Winnipeg), 54 West Gate, Winnipeg MB.
The Feminist Breakfast Club for Grown-Ups
Columns
Fefu and Her Friends, by Maria Irene Fornes, directed by Hope McIntyre, at Ralph Connor House, May 22, 2014
Reviewed by Chandra Mayor
Imagine The Breakfast Club, but with smart and weird adult women instead of clichéd and weird teenagers. And instead of a smelly high school weekend detention setting, convene the characters in a country home where they’re to plan an event together. (And then place yourself in this period estate, too, because this play is staged in various rooms in the gorgeous Ralph Connor House on Westgate). Make it 1935 instead of 1985.
Now imagine that it’s written not by John Hughes, but by the accomplished queer feminist playwright Maria Irene Fornes, the recipient of nine Obie Awards and doyenne of the New York experimental theatre scene. There’s still a great soundtrack of forgotten gems. The characters still alternately laugh, freak out, wander around, argue, ask big questions, and change their minds about each other. Except it’s a lot more interesting – gutsier, more articulate. Oh, and someone ends up dead. It’s The [Feminist] Breakfast Club for grown-ups, and you should go see this play.
The play is set in Fefu’s home, where she gathers with seven other women to coordinate and rehearse a fundraising event in which each plays a part. Fornes wrote the play to be staged in a period home, and the Ralph Connor House is the perfect setting. If you’ve never been inside, this is a marvellous opportunity to experience the house.
The play is in three acts, and for the first and third act the audience watches the scenes unfold in the living room. The second act, however, is split into four scenes in four different rooms in the house; the audience is divided into four groups, and each small group watches a different scene before rotating to the next scene in another room. All the small groups see all of the scenes, but in different chronological order; the play as a whole is concerned with the tensions and relationships between individuality and collectivity, and this structure highlights these dynamics, encouraging the audience to each have a slightly different experience of the play. We move through the house (and even onto the grounds) as the characters do, and find ourselves drawn into their worlds more viscerally than in a traditional theatre; the small groups and the necessary intimacy between actors and audience in each of these small scenes reinforces this feeling. It is not always emotionally comfortable, but that’s part of what makes it compelling.
Hope McIntyre has waited twenty years to direct this play, and her deep engagement with Fornes’s work is evident; in less experienced hands this play could come off as convoluted instead of complex, but she makes it all feel organic, organized by the logic of emotion and intuition instead of the tedious imperatives of narrative.
McIntyre has brought together a marvellous ensemble cast. The eccentric Fefu, played engagingly by Megan McArton, says that she likes exciting ideas because they give her energy, including the things that revolt her, like the slimy (and even dangerous) things underneath rocks. Each character struggles, in her own way, to negotiate complicated and messy interior truths and experiences in a world that only wants to recognize women’s bland, uncomplicated and polished facades and exteriors. Kelci Stephenson is outstanding as Julia (the psychologically fragile Ally Sheedy-ish character), perhaps the most unnerving character, prone to episodes of psychological fracture, the woman who most obviously vocalizes and embodies the impossible judgements and strictures of a patriarchal society and value system. Brenda McLean is the conservative Emilio Estevez-esque Christina, frightened by Fefu’s rebellious energy, attentive to its undercurrents of fear and despair.
Tracey Nepinak shines as the theatrical Emma, and Tracy Penner’s laugh lights up the room (even when her character uses it as a cover for her own feelings of uncertainty). Julia Arkos is commanding as the aloof Cecilia, and Nan Fewchuk adds leaven to the sometimes unstable group. This is a difficult script to work with, sometimes involving lengthy monologues and quick emotional changes; while the timing between some of the actors occasionally falters or stiffens, McIntyre keeps the pace moving.
“Something rescues us from death every moment,” says Julia, speaking with both fear and fervent conviction. Sometimes the life-saving thing that occurs in this moment will not be the thing that saves us in the very next moment, especially in a play that seeks to engage us through the intimacy of emotion and recognition, rather than through an ordered process of reasoning.
While the play itself does follow a narrative structure with a recognizable beginning, middle, and end, the women’s conversations loop around, returning again and again to the themes of voice and agency, drive and purpose, connection and dissolution, corporeality and ideology; with each loop the themes simultaneously acquire depth and destabilize what we thought we knew. It all makes sense the way that a dream makes stubborn, innate sense while you’re dreaming it.
“We as people are guardians to each other when we give love,” Julia continues. This is what these characters try to do for each other, as hopeful and world-weary mature women, rather than as teen misfits. And as mature women, each knows that guardians aren’t infallible, and that love – the giving and receiving of it – is complicated, sometimes unbearably, hopelessly so. In the end, it is the insistent, fierce, and sometimes audacious intelligence of this complex play that might be the life-saving thing, from one moment to the next.
Fefu and Her Friends, by Maria Irene Fornes, presented by Sarasvàti Productions, directed by Hope McIntyre, runs May 22 to June 1, 2014, at Ralph Connor House (University Women’s Club of Winnipeg), 54 West Gate, Winnipeg MB.