Redneck twaddle: Young Vic’s Fairview reviewed

Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury won last year’s Pulitzer Prize. It deserves additional awards for promoting racial disharmony and entrenching false, divisive and outdated stereotypes. The title is a pun. ‘Fair’ means ‘white’ and ‘view’ means ‘world outlook’ or ‘prejudice’. Really it ought to be called Honky Bias. The script declares its fascination with antique hatreds in its opening line which is a stage direction: ‘Lights up on a negro.’ No one talks like that any more.

I attended the December press night where the play began as a moderately amusing TV-level comedy about a rich black family preparing for a birthday. This opening scene was followed by 30 minutes of confusing absurdity. The actions of the family comedy were repeated in dumbshow while a radio script was relayed over the speakers in which four unseen figures bickered about race. The characters had goofy, hickish names from the 1950s — Jimbo, Bets, Suze, Mack — and they made bigoted pronouncements that were either crudely offensive or badly researched.