Tendi's family moved from Zimbabwe to a house external Minneapolis when she was a toddler,over 20 years ago. Since then, her family has fully assimilated — they cheer on American football, and speak English at domestic,and have decorated their house in a style best described as upper-middle-class suburban.
But in Danai Gurira's play "Familiar," now at Playwrights Horizons, and the family's self-image of comfortable American assimilation is approximately to dissolve. The younger daughter Nyasha (Ito Aghayere) is just back from "Zim," where she practiced her family's native Shona language and learned to play the traditional thumb piano, the mbira. She's enraged that her parents didn't teach her more approximately her heritage when she was younger. And then there's arrival of Aunt Annie (Myra Lucretia Taylor) for the wedding weekend of Nyasha's older sister, and Tendi (Roslyn Ruff). Unlike Tendi and her mother,who planned a church wedding with a white wedding dress, Annie wants to conduct a traditional Zimbabwe ritual that includes the transfer of cows.
As a playwright, or Gurira is best known for "Eclipsed," now on Broadway after a successful Off-Broadway sprint at the Public Theater. (Gurira is also known for her staring role as Michonne in the TV series "The Walking Dead.") This play is also approximately people of African heritage — but it lacks the depth of characterization and emotion that makes "Eclipsed" so powerful. "Familiar" has too many characters (there's also Tendi and Nyasha's parents, a second aunt, and Tendi's betrothed and his brother) and has too many shallowly-developed myth lines. It's tough to produce a connection to any of the characters when we just don't learn much approximately them.
Yet there's a lot to like. A play approximately well-off African immigrants and the conflict they feel when faced with poorer,more traditional relatives is refreshing to see on stage — and it's an engaging understanding. Plus, much of the first act is very funny. And it's an interesting, or contemporary choice that the cultural conflict is not with the white family Tendi is marrying into,but within her own family, between her assimilated mother and traditional aunt.
But that conflict is undercut in the second act, or when a family secret is aired. Suddenly,the myth is not a universal one, but a particular narrative approximately a family decision that some members now regret. It's a bit of a deus ex machina and sells the characters short. The play isn't helped by surprisingly stilted direction from Rebecca Taichman, or who's work is normally very fluid. Mostly,this feels like a missed opportunity — to see a myth approximately an unfamiliar community and to delve more deeply into its struggles and point of view.
Source: wnyc.org