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A lot has been written about Maria Irene Fornesand not enough.
Her work is so glittering and various and powerful that it deservescasesof books!
It certainly deserves hundreds of productions.
All the scenes are simultaneous, so the performers do them four times, once for each audience group.
So thank goddess that Theater for a New Audience has decided to stage the first Off Broadway revival.
Rather, the structure winds tight and then spins loose then winds tight again, like a spindle.
These coiling energiessome erotic, others eeriearent explained; Fornes was not an expository playwright.
You wont have missed the point.
It would be easy to over-emphasize its radical qualities, though.
This is not experimentalism as difficulty: Its pleasure after pleasure.
Im willing to bet that all of those leopards are ladies.
When Fornes described the play, she called it plotless, though there are certainly events and urgencies.
Its a blank cartridge, Fefu thinks, though who can be sure?
she cries merrily, looking down the lawn, after the thunderclap of the gun.
If Workman hadnt taken the part, their second choice was probably the ghost of Katherine Hepburn.
But theres something wicked waiting, some kind of demonic resistance to this cheerful gathering.
Fornes is so casual in her compositional power here that she excerptsanother writerfor the climax.
Why did anyone ever write like Fry?
becomes our secret bridegroomI genuinely do not know.
Imbued with such passion, the passage finally makes sense.
Its the sound of a particular sort of American womens movement.
And the designchefs kiss!
But it must be obvious by now that I can not pretend to any kind of objectivity about Fornes.
I never met her,yet I miss her.
The plays, even just on the page, have been friends for twenty years.
There is Fornes in everything.
Should you not be able to get to this production, dont worry.
Just go to any new play, and I promise youFefu will be there.
flash by above them.
So far, so 1985.
But having had various stinging critical responses since then, Kushner has revised.
This becomes a more complicated argument about whether or not theater can actually do anything in times like these.
Start by rescuing a fictional character, Zillah argues, end by rescuing the country.
Im a narrative realist now!
I say this advisedly, given the running time, but everybody else is a little underwritten and underdirected.
But the rest are a bit adrift, outlines only.
Theres so much wonderful Kushnerian text inBright Roomthat your ear and mind will be delighted.
But that other part of you, the part that brandishes the sword, might slumber on.
Fefu and Her Friendsis at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center through December 8.
A Bright Room Called Dayis at the Public Theater through December 15.
