Review: ‘Fondly, Collette Richland’ Offers Open-Eyed Dreaming

By Ben Brantley

Let’s go dreaming, shall we? C’mon, it’ll be fun. Nothing will make any sense at all, and everything will make perfect sense. You’ll feel that you’re in a wild, bright land that you didn’t know existed, but one that you’re still somehow sure that you’ve visited before. What’s more, this is a dream — one of the most entertaining you’re ever likely to have — that you get to experience while you’re wide-awake.

Time was when such an invitation involved a sugar cube, a chemical and a medicine dropper. But Elevator Repair Service has come up with a head trip that is as organic as it is delirious. It’s called “Fondly, Collette Richland.” And though what opened on Monday night at New York Theater Workshop is advertised as a play, it is far closer to what happens in the privacy of your own mind when you’re in bed with your unconscious.

Turning seemingly passive, interior activities into externalized, dynamic theater is what Elevator Repair Service does. This is the troupe that transformed the experience of reading a great book into a glorious marathon play with “Gatz,” a word-for-word rendering of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”

Sibyl Kempson’s “Fondly, Collette Richland,” directed by John Collins, is unusual for Elevator Repair Service in that it is an original play (and I use “original” advisedly). But despite its being written specifically for the theater, a perusal of its script suggests that this long and ambling work would pose seemingly insurmountable challenges to a stage director.

For it occurs in a world in which everything seems to keep shifting — setting, language, human identity. And its reasons for doing so, it would appear, are far from frivolous. Ms. Kempson’s text comes with quotations from the likes of Rilke and the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, and includes aperçus like “An image costs as much labor to humanity as a new characteristic to a plant.”

When one bewildered character says early that he doesn’t have a single clue as to what’s going on, someone in the audience yells, “You and me both, buddy.” Never mind that this rude interrupter turns out to be a member of the troupe. He’s surely speaking for many of us.

On second thought, no, he’s not. Because by this time, “Fondly” has gathered such a head of narrative steam that you’re happy to ride it wherever it takes you. Elevator Repair Service is using every trick, flamboyant and invisible, at its disposal to keep you not only diverted but also ensnared by a labyrinthine plot that is part 1950s soap opera, part vintage Gothic, part ontological detective story and part classic theater of the absurd, à la Ionesco, Pirandello and Albee.

Excerpt from “Review: ‘Fondly, Collette Richland’ Offers Open-Eyed Dreaming” by Ben Brantley. Read the full article here.