Undine Barnes-Callas isn't exactly the poster girl for "keeping it real."
As the central character in Lynn Nottage's comic "Fabulation or, The Re-education of Undine," she's a prep-school and Dartmouth- educated dynamic diva who was left all alone in the world when her family perished in a house fire.
She's blunt, sarcastic, speaks with authority and calls it like she sees it.
"Send the pussy in," Undine says introducing her accountant, who is, indeed, a pussy.
So even when she receives her eventual comeuppance, it's hard to muster schadenfreude when Undine takes her steep tumble from being an utterly fabulous public relations entrepreneur living on the Upper East Side to living with her family in the Brooklyn projects.
Yep, the same family she told a reporter from Black Enterprise had perished in a fire yet lives. It turns out they just didn't fit the narrative of what her family should be.
That hints at the central theme of Undine's re-education--where does one fit, what should be? Undine's greatest journey is figuring out who she is--stripped of the designer duds andthe lust-at-first-sight husband who diappeared with all her money.
Sure, her comments are withering, but Undine is still immensely likeable. As she struggles with a life turned upside down, you still wish she would succeed because she is finally confronted with truths that were always lies, a past that can never be left behind, a void still waiting to be filled.
The cast, particularly Natalie Venetia Belcon as Undine, are all superb. "Fabulation or, The Re-education of Undine" runs at Baltimore's Center Stage thru March 8.
As the central character in Lynn Nottage's comic "Fabulation or, The Re-education of Undine," she's a prep-school and Dartmouth- educated dynamic diva who was left all alone in the world when her family perished in a house fire.
She's blunt, sarcastic, speaks with authority and calls it like she sees it.
"Send the pussy in," Undine says introducing her accountant, who is, indeed, a pussy.
So even when she receives her eventual comeuppance, it's hard to muster schadenfreude when Undine takes her steep tumble from being an utterly fabulous public relations entrepreneur living on the Upper East Side to living with her family in the Brooklyn projects.
Yep, the same family she told a reporter from Black Enterprise had perished in a fire yet lives. It turns out they just didn't fit the narrative of what her family should be.
That hints at the central theme of Undine's re-education--where does one fit, what should be? Undine's greatest journey is figuring out who she is--stripped of the designer duds andthe lust-at-first-sight husband who diappeared with all her money.
Sure, her comments are withering, but Undine is still immensely likeable. As she struggles with a life turned upside down, you still wish she would succeed because she is finally confronted with truths that were always lies, a past that can never be left behind, a void still waiting to be filled.
The cast, particularly Natalie Venetia Belcon as Undine, are all superb. "Fabulation or, The Re-education of Undine" runs at Baltimore's Center Stage thru March 8.
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