Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine
Encyclopedia
Production history
Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine premiered Off-BroadwayOff-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
at Playwrights Horizons
Playwrights Horizons
Playwrights Horizons is a not-for-profit Off-Broadway theater located in New York City dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers, and lyricists, and to the production of their new work....
, running from June 3, 2004 (previews) June 13 (official) through July 11. Directed by Kate Whoriskey
Kate Whoriskey
Kate Whoriskey was the artistic director of the Intiman Theatre in Seattle, Washington, USA, for a year, departing in April, 2011 after the theater's board cancelled the remainder of the 2011 season due to financial problems. Whoriskey had been co-Artistic Director of Intiman along with Bartlett...
, the cast featured Charlayne Woodard
Charlayne Woodard
Charlaine "Charlayne" Woodard is an American film, stage and television actress and playwright. She has written four plays, titled Pretty Fire, Neat, In Real Life, which she starred in, and "Flight"....
as Undine.
In regional productions, the Center Stage
Center Stage
Center Stage is a 2000 American drama film, directed by Nicholas Hytner, about a group of young dancers from various backgrounds who enroll at the fictitious American Ballet Academy in New York City...
, Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Maryland production ran from January 28 through March 8, 2009.
Plot
Undine is a successful African-American publicist living in Manhattan. When her husband takes her money, she is forced to return to her former life in Brooklyn, and to deal with her working-class relatives.Critical response
Ben BrantleyBen Brantley
Benjamin D. "Ben" Brantley is an American journalist and the chief theater critic of The New York Times.-Life and career:...
, reviewing for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, wrote: "But while Fabulation may follow a much-traveled route to a guaranteed destination, the view along the way is far less predictable. In charting the social fall and moral rise of Undine Barnes Calles, nee Sharona Watkins, Fabulation subverts its comic and sentimental glibness with punchy social insights and the firecracker snap of unexpected humor."
The Curtain Up reviewer wrote: "Like [Edith] Wharton, Nottage casts a satirical eye on the large cast of characters, regardless of class or race. Unlike the more serious Wharton, [she] has created a generally hilarious scenario for Undine's nightmarish comeuppance and inevitable redemption as a likeable, lovable, loving member of the human race...The script has other credibility stretching holes—chief of them being her giving Hervé, the sexy Latin husband (Robert Montano) who tangoed his way into her heart and hearth, full access to all her money and becoming romantically involved with Guy, an ex-addict who's served time in jail."