by Patrick White
The play opens with the line “My husband married me to have a constant reminder of how loathsome women are.” For the second night in a row, I found myself amazingly at a play whose entire cast was filled with women.
Thursday night, I was at Steel Magnolias which features the heartwarming, cross-stitch worthy line “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” Tonight I was at Fefu and Her Friends at Hubbard Hall Theatre Company directed by its artistic director Erin Nicole Harrington and running only through Sunday, May 10 which featured the wife identifying her husband with the misogynistic quote.
Fefu and Her Friends is María Irene Fornés’s groundbreaking feminist play of 1975 which gathers a group of eight women in a country house in 1935 to organize a benefit and features themes of gender, identity and self fulfillment. It has an audacious immersive structure which starts the audience in the drawing room together welcoming the guests. It then splits the audience up (identified by separate animals: deer, weasels, rabbits) into four groups and sends them off to separate rooms in the house-a bedroom, the garden, the kitchen and the library. The rooms speak to each other in that the end of one scene can be glimpsed as you enter the next room and Fefu (Katherine Danforth) makes appearances through many, if not all of them.
How this works on the Hubbard Hall campus is you pack up and head out of the Opera House, down the stairs and visit the beautiful, rustic rehearsal hall, board room and artist residency. It’s an added backstage bonus to the production which lets you see the performing arts center’s daily resources while serving this avant garde classic play.
The technical elements (scenic design by the director, lighting/sound by Maureen “Mo” Cossey) besides a pleasing parlour to open and close the show were fairly rudimentary but you were visiting five different spaces so not much else was necessary. Costumes by Kim Martin featured appropriate and pleasing period attire along with some knockout dresses!
The cast had a surprise addition on Friday evening when local theater powerhouse Tanya Gorlow (Sand Lake Center for the Art’s Executive Director and recent star of The Roommate at Albany Civic Theatre) stood in as Cindy due to a cast member’s emergency absence. Wildly, Tanya had performed the same role in this rarely produced show in California! How lucky was that?!? To have a superb actor familiar with the piece and the specific role to fill in hours before the show went on and bring her fierce intelligence and grounded moral bearing to the role? That’s some kind of theatrical kismet working in the production and audience’s favor.
Fefu played by Katherine Danforth in a strong distracted performance was as good as I’ve ever seen her onstage. Her gambits threatened to fly away as her tendrils seemed to from her messy bun. Maureen “Moe” Cossey was very appealing as Sue and favored us with a surprising Schubert deep into the play. I was especially taken with the strong bond between Antoinette Faisano’s Paula and Hannah Thien’s Cecelia. Faisano’s monologue is a heartbreaking gem. Jenny Wright as Julia dryly undercuts the exuberance of the girl’s night from her wheelchair. Neve Marotta is a fantastic listener who makes the most of every opportunity to learn from everyone. Tiffany McWilliams in a pair of glamorous dresses is a freewheeling delight, bursting into every room and supplying the party whether she is the most active water fighter or quietly warbling “Get Happy,” this actor knows how to make a scene!
Harrington and Hubbard Hall are to be commended for this brave and beautiful production. I was thrilled to see this on their schedule as I had never seen this contemporary classic but The Hall went the extra mile with representatives of The League of Women Voters represented there and I had a lovely conversation with a woman who was a Hubbard Hall Board Member in my group of deer. Well worth the trip…I would travel twice as far.
Hubbard Hall Theatre Company presents Fefu and Her Friends by María Irene Fornés, directed by Erin Nicole Harrington, running May -10, 2026, at Hubbard Hall Center for Arts and Education, 25 East Main Street in Cambridge, NY. CAST: Katherine Danforth as Fefu, Jewel Winant as Cindy (Tanya Gorlow played this role in the performance reviewed), Maureen “Moe” Cossey as Sue, Antoinette Faisano as Paula, Hannah Thien as Cecelia, Jenny Wright as Julia, Neve Marotta as Christina, and Tiffany McWilliams as Emma. CREATIVE TEAM: Scenic design by Erin Nicole Harrington, lighting/sound design by Maureen “Mo” Cossey, costumes by Kim Martin, intimacy coordinator Madeline Johns, stage manager Laurie Kenny.
As intended by the playwright, the audience is divided and guided in small groups to experience scenes played out in four different locations across the Hubbard Hall campus during Part 2 of the performance. There are both immersive performances, such as this review describes, in which the audience follows the actors (see map below), and stationary performances. Run Time: Approximately 2 hours with intermission.
