Fabulation

Synopsis

Undine Barnes Calles, a successful publicist who watches her once-stable life disintegrate before her eyes. When her Latin-lover husband Herve walks out on her, he takes with him all her money and social standing, and leaves her broke with an unborn child, and with no one in her personal sphere to turn to for solace. Undine must then face what's most avoided and dreaded: the home and family in Brooklyn on which she turned her back 14 years earlier.

Our Review:

18 September 2006

Undine is a svelte PR executive who runs her own company. She is a self-made woman, revelling in material success and moving in the shallow but glitzy world of charity balls and celebrity appearances. At 37 she has put a 14-year gulf between herself and her tenement-dwelling family, even pretending to the newspapers that they are all dead. Then, one day, her glamorous Argentinian husband (slinky Karl Collins) absconds with her money, leaving her pregnant and poverty-stricken. She returns, of necessity, to her despised roots and begins a process of rediscovery. Oh and she’s black, a “buppy” (black yuppy). And, by the way, this is a comedy.

Presented in the spring as part of the Tricycle’s African-American season and given a second run in recognition of its success then, Lynn Nottage’s play is a surprise to the first-time viewer. For a start, the promised humour sometimes seems rather laboured. True, there have been some cast changes, but generally the multi-tasking actors acqu...

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