Fabulation, or, the Re-Education of Undine

by Lynn Nottage

Knocked-up and seriously broke, a successful publicist is plunged into a topsy-turvy world of welfare mothers and drug addicts, and forced to confront the family she left behind. Fabulation is a darkly comic rags-to-riches-to-rags tale of falling down and reaching up to find the goodness within. A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance Daniel Breaker, Saidah Arrika Ekulona, Jon Matthews, Gary Perez, Melle Powers, Myra Lucretia Taylor, John Wesley and Charlayne Woodard.

Genres: Plays, Fiction, Audiobook, Drama, School

72 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2005

About the author

Lynn Nottage is an American playwright whose work often deals with the lives of marginalized people. She is a professor of Playwriting at Columbia University. She was the first woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice; the first in 2009 for Ruined, and the second in 2017 for Sweat.

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

2024 review:

I only first read this a year ago, but I had to revisit it. This play has been on my mind for this past year, and every thought I've had about it has been glowing. Honestly, I enjoyed it even more the second time around.

I've probably doubled the total number of plays I've read in the last year, so revisiting this hit a bit different since I have more experience with the medium this time around. It's funny, last time I was struck by Undine being an unlikable but sympathetic character, and since then I think I've come around a lot more on her. She's a complicated character who is very malleable in the world around her, constantly being shaped by her current experiences and circumstances. The drama and the humour of it all was just as good the second time around. The ending is so satisfying.

I listened to the recording from LA Theatre Works again because Charlayne Woodard so perfectly embodies the character of Undine that I can hardly separate the two. That said, I do plan to read the play with my eyes at some point in the hopefully near future. Not only do I want to experience the play in a different way, but Fabulation has also been published in one volume with Intimate Apparel, which I am dying to read (I've only read one other play from Nottage, but it didn't hit the same spot as Fabulation, but I think Intimate Apparel sounds fantastic).

This has honestly become one of my favourite plays.

2023 review:

This was my first time reading a play by Lynn Nottage! I listened to the audioplay from LA Theatre Works, and Charlayne Woodard was phenomenal in the titular role. I really enjoyed the sense of humour and genuinely got some great laughs out of it, but the drama of it all played out wonderfully too. Undine is an unlikable character but the circumstances of the play make her surprisingly easy to sympathise with. Overall, I really enjoyed listening to this one, and I would definitely recommend checking out the audio play.

[Miki · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

I think that Nottage has the potential to become a favourite playwright! Although I preferred Intimate Apparel, Fabulation was still fantastic!

Undine is a successful, black entrepreneur who loses it all in one moment. This play is about how her loss brings her back to her roots and reminds her what's truly important.

[Ebook, borrowed from Hoopla via the library]

[Carsyn! · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun read honestly. I think I would like to see this performed.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has great potential to pop in production.

[bri ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Note: I had to read this for school so if my review seems a little harsh it’s because I was forced to read it 😔

OK, this is hardly a review as much as it is just me expressing my hatred for the main character so be prepared. Warning, this “review” contains spoilers!

To start off with— I hated Undine’s character so much. Plain and simple.

She’s an egocentric narcissist that thinks that she reigns supreme because she has money. I think I would’ve enjoyed the story if Undine didn’t deserve her downfall, but she 100% did.

I’m trying to find words to describe her further but I literally can’t. She’s a woman who hates her family, belittles the people that work for her, and shames others because they haven’t worked as hard as she does.

This book is 2 stars instead of 1 because it was moderately entertaining 😁

[Jenny Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn’t the play Nottage is best known for, but it’s a hell of a play nonetheless. Funny, biting, with the nuance brought by characters who are, at heart, human. I love the way plays compact narrative into dialogue, and dialogue into time, until you have a few beads of life stretched thin across the beats. Nottage executes this form so well here—two hours of text, and I left feeling I actually knew the character: I could see her jostling with her brother growing up, sharp smart, tagging into double Dutch with the 2 girls, blind to her grandma’s heroin addiction as the rest, pushing herself beyond what she thought others saw, for an exaggerated accent and the veneer of success. So much life in so few words.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly entertaining production of LA Theater Works. A woman grows up in poverty, reinvents herself as she graduates from Dartmouth and launches a successful professional career, loses it all to a feckless husband, and then must come to terms with what she has become when she crawls back to the family that she previously ghosted. It is all done with humor, panache, and wonderful acting.

[Relena_reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charlayne Woodard gives a tour de force performance in the LA Theatreworks performance. The play itself depends on a lot of well-worn tropes, but manages a balance between humor and drama that the performers play beautifully.

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Performed by L.A. Theater Works as an audio play, Fabulation was fabulous - frenetic, funny, with an underlying message. A minor play compared to Nottage's amazing "Sweat" but quite entertaining. Audio plays may be my new thing....

[Gil · Rating 5 out of 5]

for full review visit http://gilwilson.wordpress.com

[Kirsti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rich woman's life collapses in on itself, and she returns to the family she once snobbishly shunned. I listened to the L.A. TheatreWorks version with Charlayne Woodard and a full cast.

[Liz Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is joining the ranks of "favorite plays".

[Dara Singer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerhouse of a play from start to finish. Completely captivating. You start from loving to hate her into a journey of empathy.

[Diana Rendon · Rating 5 out of 5]

FAVORITE NOTTAGE PLAY. so funny, so nuanced. obsessed!

[Alayna Domboski · Rating 3 out of 5]

likeee 3.5 but not my fav ever! fun and interesting plot though

[Corvyn Appleby · Rating 3 out of 5]

light fare, but light fare from one of the greatest living playwrights, so it’s still a fantastic read

[mengwe · Rating 4 out of 5]

that was great!!!

[Anilea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great play and audial adaption about a woman who gets humbled and faces the truths of her undoing with no Black Trauma or tragedy; but a lot of Dark humor and a lot of love.

[Vel Veeter]

In this play by Lynn Nottage, we meet Undine at the beginning of her fall from grace. She left home a long time ago to make her way in the world as PR specialist. There’s a scandal, she’s pregnant, and now she must return home because she’s lost the world she so loosely constructed on her out there in the world. As you can imagine the name change plays a large role in the play as her family knows her by her given name, and that she changed her name in order to shun and push away that family it’s a sore spot (I think about the same thing playing out in Alice Walker’s story “Everyday Use” which uses the name changing in the late 1960s as part of Black Power movement to poke fun a little at herself). Anyway, she must now find her new way in this very new and scary world, not of her making this time.
Apparently this play is based on the Book of Ruth from the Old Testament, a story I don’t know all that well, but it’s there. It’s also a play full of jokes, which is fun of course.

[Libby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Should make for an entertaining show

[Banuta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it and didn’t. The trope of the very rich person losing everything, the investigation of classism from the perspective of the privileged. A big play, though, and Id love to see it.