FABULATION OR, THE RE-EDUCATION OF UNDINE
At Playwright Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. Through June 27. (212) 279-4200.
YOU’VE heard of the prodigal son? Well, “Fabulation” is Lynn Nottage’s version of the parable of the prodigal daughter.
Nottage, who recently gave us the extraordinarily touching “Intimate Apparel,” about an African-American seamstress in the New York of 1905, here devotes herself to the bitter comedy of an African-American woman in today’s New York.
As the high-powered head of a p.r. firm, Undine is nasty to everyone and swims amid the chic and powerful. It all blows up when her sexy Argentine husband is discovered to have stolen all her money – forcing Undine (whose name was Sharona until she read Edith Wharton in college) to return to the Brooklyn family she’s ignored for 17 years.
In fact, Undine once told an interviewer they died in a fire, but they’re all – father, mother and brother – alive, and working as security guards.
Once the action shifts to Brooklyn, the play gets interesting, raw and funny. Undine discovers her granny is a junkie and is recruited to score smack for her.
Ultimately, it’s Undine who’s busted and ordered to attend 12-step sessions, where she meets a kind man who volunteers to help her in her pregnancy. (Yes, Undine’s pregnant – and having the baby only because it’s too late for an abortion.)
Elsewhere in her travels, she encounters a cold welfare bureaucrat and a gentle doctor.
“Fabulation or, the Re-Education of Undine,” to give the full, explicit title, is a mixed bag. The affectionate satire of Undine’s life in Brooklyn is much better than the “Sex and the City”-like sections set in Manhattan. The play needs to be more clearly thought out, and could benefit from sharper direction than it gets from Kate Whoriskey.
The cast, though, is terrific. Charlayne Woodard, lithe and witty, brings spirit and, ultimately, soul to Undine. Everyone else plays multiple roles: Stephen Kunken is outstanding as a professor/junkie and as a no-nonsense doctor; Melle Powers is excellent as Undine’s office assistant and mother; Robert Montana scores brilliantly as both the dastardly Argentine hubby and Brooklyn nice guy, and Myra Lucretia Taylor is a comic force as both the granny and the snooty bureaucrat.
“Fabulation” is a play, though, that has yet to find its center of gravity.