Review: FAIRVIEW at Ground Floor Theatre

Fair warning: Jackie Sibblies Drury's FAIRVIEW isn't your typical night at the theatre. The play starts out looking like a normal family comedy but quickly turns into something else entirely. Imagine sitting down for what seems like a standard TV sitcom about a Black family, and then suddenly everything you thought you knew gets turned upside down. It's funny, shocking, and confronting.

At first, FAIRVIEW follows the Frasier family preparing for a birthday celebration. Beverly (Chelsea Manasseri) and Dayton (Claude Xavier) along with their daughter Keisha (Sweet Van Loan) seem to be living a picture-perfect family moment. But as the play unfolds, the seemingly normal family scene begins to fracture and reveal something much more complex beneath the surface. What starts as a comfortable family sitcom gradually transforms into a provocative exploration of racial dynamics and perception.

The magic of FAIRVIEW is how it plays with our expectations. Just when we think you understand what's happening, the play shifts gears and challenges everything we’ve been watching. It's a theatrical magic trick that forces us to look at how we talk about race, family, and identity in a completely new way. Playwright Drury doesn't just tell a story – she blows up the entire idea of how stories are supposed to be told.

Pulitzer prize winning FAIRVIEW has been making audiences think, laugh, and squirm since it opened in 2018. This isn't just a play – it's an experience that gets under our skin and makes us see the world differently. Drury has created something truly unique: a show that's both entertaining and deeply powerful, challenging how we think about race, representation, and storytelling.

Ground Floor Theatre can always be counted on to bring us voices from the margins, stories that challenge us, and plays that never fail to meet the theatre’s mission of focusing on underrepresented communities. FAIRVIEW meets all these criteria. Typical also of GFT is attention to production values and a diverse talented cast. These are evident in FAIRVIEW. Interestingly, even the set design meets the surprising elements of the script. Upon entering the theatre, it appears the set is not quite finished, nothing is on the walls. Later, we’ll learn why.

The plot in the first scene of the play seems unremarkable. The cast sometimes looks curiously like they’re “acting.” Only in retrospect does the genius of this generality become the root of the whole play. Manaserri, Xavier, Van Loan, and Mariah Epps as Jasmine each give us solid performances as a Black family who are confronted with the same typical challenges and problems we all face. But by the second scene, the facade is shattered. Director Anderson does some great work throughout, but their work sparkles with the sharp and cringey dialogue that’s perfectly executed by Suzanne Balling (Suze) Chris Skinner (Mack) Hatlyn Barricklow (Bets) and John Edward Cook (Jimbo) in the second scene of the show. I’ll refrain from telling you what happens after that. It’s truly worth the surprise. And finally, Van Loan effectively shoulders the weight of ushering us through the provocative and poignant ending of the play. 

Go see FAIRVIEW, take a friend, and let the themes of the play marinate over a late night cocktail. Allow yourself to savor its themes over the week, month or even the year. It’s great theatre, written to do the most important work the craft is meant for: make you think, and hopefully, change the way you see things.

FAIRVIEW is the first show in GFT’s tenth season. Coming up, we’ll be treated to I WANNA BE A F*CKING PRINCESS, AMY AND THE ORPHANS, and PARADE. Go see ‘em!

FAIRVIEW

by Jackie Sibbles Drury

Directed by Anderson

Ground Floor Theatre

Thursdays-Sundays

Through  March 8th

979 Springdale Rd

Austin, TX, 78702

February 27 - March 8, 2025

Content Advisory: FAIRVIEW deals with adult themes including racism and may be distressing to some.

To post a comment, you must register and login.