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A.F.R.A.I.D. (As Reported by Fanny Fern)

nytheatre.com review by Terri Galvin
August 15, 2005

Why aren’t more Americans acquainted with the 19th-century writer Fanny Fern? In 1855, when Fern (the pseudonym for Sara Payson Willis Eldredge Farrington Parton) was hired by the New York Ledger, she became not only the first woman newspaper columnist in America, but, at the then-astonishing salary of $100 per column, the country’s highest paid journalist of either sex. Having begun her writing career only four years earlier, as a destitute 41-year-old widow / divorcee / single mother, she’d already captivated readers both here and in England with a string of popular periodical articles, a best-selling collection of satirical essays, and a well received autobiographical novel—prompting a cranky Nathaniel Hawthorne to proclaim her the “exception” to that “damned mob of scribbling women.”What makes this recognition all the more remarkable is that Fern’s early work focused not on world events or current crusades like temperance or abolition, but on the relatively prosaic frustrations, oppressions, and disappointments of ordinary women in Victorian America. Even when the financial security afforded by her column (Fern’s particular “room of her own”) allowed her to cover weightier topics like prostitution and sweatshop labor, she continually returned to the everyday domestic trials of women held hostage by the husbands, fathers, and brothers so cogently impaled on the tip of her acutely observant pen. And while always eager to skewer the latest perpetrator of social injustice, Fern also never hesitated to mock herself—disarming potential critics while endearing herself to readers who might otherwise be alarmed by such breezy insurrection within the ranks.Clearly, this is a writer long overdue for a second look.Which is why A.F.R.A.I.D. (As Reported by Fanny Fern), composer/writer Susan Stoderl's operatic musical, feels so frustrating. Culled directly from Fern’s writings, A.F.R.A.I.D. presents an assortment of characters and vignettes that strictly adhere to the letter of her work, but, sadly, drain the life and immediacy from her irreverent, ironic spirit. Where Fern could be poignant, playful, and incisive, Stoderl’s loose collection of scenes and commentary (including a meeting of the American Females for Righteousness, Abasement, Ignorance, and Docility), is heavy-handed, melodramatic, and overly formal, with nearly all dialogue sung in full operatic majesty. Characters who should be risible are flattened into leaden, ruthless villains, never quite reaching the absurdity to render them comic rather than tiresome. And though she has a splendidly talented cast, Charmaine Chester’s static stage direction only heightens the starchiness, as performers stride center stage to deliver their pieces straight out front, often oblivious to fellow characters.This seems almost tragic, considering how Fern was celebrated for her distinctively conversational style, full of spontaneous, italicized interjections, and chatty personal asides—more an intimate tete-a-tete with a vivacious friend than a moralizing lecture on societal woes. (This is the woman, after all, who wryly observed that “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” and coined the term “fashionist” nearly a century and a half before Sex and the City-inspired pundits added the final “a.”) And although Stoderl has produced an innovative musical format for Fern’s material, she has, sadly, lost the acerbic mischief of Fern’s unique voice.Given the degree of artistry in this production, it would be well worth the effort to recapture that voice. In today’s battle over “moral values” and the vast economic schism “between squalor and splendor,” Fern’s observations on life’s little details are just as relevant—and potent—as ever. As she herself discerned, “Little things are the hinges of the universe.”And perhaps of the theatre as well.