The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Danai Gurira treats theatergoers to something ‘Familiar’
One often reads about our country’s tightening embrace of anti-intellectualism, and small wonder. Knowledge can be woefully unsettling, unnerving and destructive.
That includes knowledge we grasp yet don’t share with others, information that we deny or refuse to accept and facts of which we are blithely ignorant. In “Familiar,” Danai Gurira’s family play receiving its world premiere at the Yale Repertory Theatre, knowledge is all this and more, and it proves simultaneously burdensome, sobering and liberating, depending on who releases and who receives the news.
“Familiar,” smartly directed by Rebecca Taichman and continuing through Feb. 21 at The Rep, is very much a comedy of manners, rituals and culture clashes right up until Gurira releases the hounds fairly soon in Act II.
Marvelous Chinyaramwira (Saidah Arrika Ekulona) and her husband Donald (Harvey Blanks), a married, mid-60s couple from Zimbabwe who’ve achieved the L.L. Bean version of the American Dream in Minnesota over the past 30-plus years, prepare for the wedding of their first daughter Tendikayi (Cherise Boothe) and Chris (Ross Marquand), a white American.
Nyasha (Shyko Amos), the Chinyaramwiras’ younger daughter, puts her fledgling career as a singer-songwriter in New York temporarily on hold to join her parents and Aunt Margaret (Patrice Johnson Chevannes) for the occasion. Aunt Annie (Kimberly Scott) from Event: “Familiar” When: now-Feb. 21; 8 p.m. Feb. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21; 2 p.m. Feb. 11, 14, 21 Where: Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120Chapel St., New Haven Tickets: $20-$98 Info: 203-432-1234, yalerep.org Zimbabwe joins the festivity as does Chris’ brother Brad (Joe Tippett).
Much of the play’s laughter derives from surmountable conflict between generations, cultures and races. Since Gurira is a native of Iowa to Zimbabwean parents who moved back home after Zimbabwe gained independence at the end of the 1970s, it’s not surprising that an underlying issue is identity.
Young Nyasha, the most “American” of the family, yearns to absorb as much of her African culture as her pores can handle. Tendikayi, on the other hand, has successfully assimilated as an educated, middle-class, Midwestern lawyer who watches her younger sister in altering bemusement and irritation.
Meanwhile, Aunt Annie, garbed in her indigenous dress, thrives on getting Marvelous’ bourgeois goat while Marvelous wastes no strength trying to mask her antipathy toward her older sister.
Interestingly enough, both Donald and Margaret are conspicuously silent during the waves of bickering that surround them, other than their quiet overtures to change the subject. One senses that it’s merely a question of time before these two intensely tacit yet affable characters break into their arias.
When the face of “Familiar” flips from sunnyside up to over-not-so-easy, Gurira does so with Shavian grace, as when Vivie learns the truth about her mother in “Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” The truth of the family’s past shatters the daughters’ sense of self and gravely threatens their present and future lives.
This twist not only makes one glad that one patiently attended the chatty and seemingly ordinary first act, but reveals a signpost of maturity in Gurira’s dramatic skills when comparing “Familiar” to “In the Continuum” (co-written with Nikkole Salter) and “Eclipsed,” two of her previous efforts seen at Yale Rep.
Taichman’s cast is exemplar as a balanced, finely tuned ensemble, and The Rep’s design team, scenic designer Matt Saunders; costumes designer ToniLeslie James; lighting designer Joey Moro; sound designer Brian Hickey; and composer Somi, stylishly and unobtrusively bring Gurira’s world alive.
Gurira has said that she hopes to show how familiar this first-generation Zimbabwean family is to theatergoers yet to see characters such as these or hear their stories on stage. She certainly accomplishes this with finesse without her device appearing overly familiar.
“Familiar” indeed resonates and illuminates at once. how much talent there is; you can see one interpretation of the role one night and then a slightly different but equally wonderful interpretation another night,” Huffman said.
• Speaking of “Barber of Saville,” the Connecticut Virtuosi Orchestra and Connecticut Lyric Opera will present Rossini’s masterpiece at several locations this month and next, from Trinity-onMain Arts Center in New Britain Friday to MHS Performing Arts Center in Middletown March 28. Tickets are available at Ctlyricopera.com or 860351-3135.