It’s hard to name a living playwright who is more influential — yet more routinely ignored by major theaters — than Maria Irene Fornes. The 86-year-old Cuban-born avatar of the avant-garde has been silenced by Alzheimer’s for many years, but the body of work she created — brimming with feminist insight, sly wit and language that manages to be muscular and elliptical simultaneously — has left her fingerprints on writers as diverse as Caryl Churchill and Nilo Cruz.
Halcyon Theatre’s current production of “Fefu and Her Friends” offers theatergoers a chance to introduce — or reacquaint — themselves with one of the more popular titles in Fornes’ canon. In director Tony Adams’ hyperintimate staging, the audience is broken into groups of four during part of the first act and led around to small “rooms” outside the main playing area to witness tete-a-tetes among a group of women. These sidebar conversations, if you will, expand upon (and sometimes confound) what we’ve seen of these women in the opening scene, where they’ve gathered in Fefu’s drawing room.
Fefu (Eleanor Katz) is the hoydenish hostess, with a revolver on the sideboard that instantly recalls Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler.” In fact, she enjoys taking shots at her unseen husband, Phil, as he works outside. (Her friends try to reassure themselves that she’s just shooting blanks.) Her first line — “My husband married me to have a constant reminder of how loathsome women are” — lets us know that feel-good feminist empowerment isn’t on the menu at Fefu’s house.
RELATED: MOST READ ENTERTAINMENT NEWS THIS HOUR
The articulate but vulnerable and confused women Fefu has gathered in her New England home, circa 1935, also recall “The Group,” Mary McCarthy’s classic novel about a, well, group of 1930s Vassar grads struggling to find their place in the world. But where McCarthy’s voice is one of clinical detachment, Fornes offers a mosaic of verbal snapshots running the gamut from private hallucinations to actual “performances” in the second act, as the women rehearse a presentation for a charity that turns into a high-spirited water fight.
This is tricky stuff, to be sure, and not all of the ensemble seemed completely at ease with the language and shifts in tone on opening night. But over the two acts and two hours of the play, we see facets of all of these women, suggesting the toll that uniting their public selves and their interior shadows has taken on them.
Nowhere is this clearer than with Julia (Mary Ann de la Cruz), who has been using a wheelchair since witnessing a deer being shot. She herself wasn’t hit by the bullet but it left some sort of scar — real or imagined — on her brain that impedes her mobility. (Speaking of — audience members with mobility issues may find the ambulatory small scenes difficult to negotiate in the space.) There is a sort of implied telepathy between Julia and Fefu that adds darker hues to the conviviality the women show when they’re all together. In one of the small-room scenes, de la Cruz’s Julia delivers a bravura monologue showing just how fragile her hold on reality is — a counterpoint to Fefu’s forced bonhomie.
It’s not always an easy play to unpack — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t accessible. Some of the best moments come in offhand moments and mundane exchanges that shine with everyday honesty.
On a staircase outside the main theater, Christina (Sarah Rachel Schol) breaks away from fanciful explorations of the phrase “swept off their feet” and abruptly tells Cindy (Ashley Agbay) that Fefu scares her. “I don’t know if she’s careful with life,” she ventures.
Finding that balance between a careful and carefree life is just one of the underlying motifs in this play. Adams’ staging itself doesn’t always strike a balance. The second act, where the women gather again after their private conversations, feels a bit saggy. But Fornes’ gift for shattering our expectations about both conventional drama and the trajectory of women’s relationships leaves some beguiling shards embedded in the brain after the final curtain.
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.
“Fefu and Her Friends” – 3 stars
When: Through Oct. 8
Where: Halcyon Theatre, Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3253 W. Wilson Ave.
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $20 advance (some tickets available at no cost through “Radical Hospitality” program), 773-413-0454 or halcyontheatre.org
RELATED STORIES:
‘Fefu and Her Friends’ casting, season changes at Halycon
Casting announced for Steep’s ‘Bobbie Clearly’
‘Hamilton’s’ Lin-Manuel Miranda is coming to Chicago
More Top Picks Best Printers For Teachers
.galleries:after {
content: ”;
display: block;
background-color: #144A7C;
margin: 16px auto 0;
height: 5px;
width: 100px;
}
.galleries:before {
content: “Entertainment Photos and Video”;
display: block;
font: 700 20px Georgia,serif;
text-align: center;
color: #1e1e1e;
var playlist = ‘chi_ent_movie_trailers’,
layout = ‘autoblurb’,
iu = ‘%2F4011%2Ftrb.chicagotribune%2Fent’;
Watch the latest movie trailers.