"Fake It Until You Make It," Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles, Jan. 29 – Mar. 9, 2025
Feb. 8, 2025 | By Bruce R. Feldman
In Brief: If you want to send a message, call Western Union, Sam Goldwyn was supposed to have said. The other way to make a point is to use abundant humor, and that’s exactly what dramatist Larissa FastHorse does in her shrewd and delicious new farce, Fake It Until You Make It.
Noah Bean and Julie Bowen in Fake It Until You Make It (Photo: Makela Yepez)
The important subject on FastHorse’s mind is who is or isn’t a Native American and how do you determine this? If it’s a question of DNA, what percentage of indigenous blood should be needed to qualify? Or is it all about your culture, your upbringing, or both?
And then there’s the peculiar matter of ethnic shifting, the act of voluntarily changing your ethnicity or race. Never heard of that? It’s a concept that FastHorse presents irreverently, but in fact is a real thing for Whites and non-Whites alike.
None of this may sound like a barrel of laughs, but this gifted playwright expertly deploys all of the elements of traditional stage farce – mistaken identities, exaggerated situations, tightly choreographed physical comedy, and plenty of slamming doors – to lay out the endless complications and frustrations that surround this sensitive topic.
The setting is an old office building repurposed to house Native American community organizations with idiosyncratic names like N.O.B.U.S.H., 2S Pride, and the more conventional Indigenous Nations Soaring.
River, played by a sensationally funny Julie Bowen, commands this last group with a determination and purpose that only a wealthy White do-gooder could muster. That River is not a Native American is a source of constant irritation for Wynona (a prickly Tonantzin Carmelo) who runs another indigenous agency in the suite next door.
A shrewd and delicious farce from a gifted emerging playwright
The comic tension grows when River hires Wynona’s boyfriend Theo (Noah Bean) as Executive Director of Indigenous Nations Soaring because she needs a Native American on board in order to get a big grant, one that Wynona also wants.
The only problem is that Theo, using the alias Mark Short Bull, also is White, a fact that he hides to help Wynona sabotage River. The comic complications heighten when the real Short Bull shows up to claim the job.
FastHorse brings all of this ethnic confusion to an unexpected yet satisfying conclusion in a taut 80-minutes-with-no-intermission running time, but not before incorporating a battle-of-the-sexes subplot borrowed from screwball comedy into the fateful, humorous web she weaves so adeptly.
The cast, under the smooth, precise, fast-paced direction of Michael John Garcés, is uniformly excellent, not only the sublime Bowen (who proves she can be as funny on stage as she is on the small screen), but also Carmelo and Bean, as well as Eric Stanton Betts as Mark Short Bull and Dakota Ray Hebert and Brandon Delsid as other officemates and comic foils.
Dakota Ray Hebert, Brandon Delsid, Tonantzin Carmelo (Photo: Makela Yepez)
To succeed, a farce needs more than smart writing and sharp acting, and that is a set that allows the cast to run around the stage in a flap, slamming doors or hiding to avoid detection at a moment’s notice.
The action takes place on two floors of the office building, redecorated with colorful murals by indigenous artists. FastHorse specifies in her stage directions that the set must allow the actors to run up and down the stairs but when they arrive, the new floor they reach is always located on the stage level.
Sara Ryung Clement has created scenery elements – with lots of those irksome doors – that move in and out of sight to create one floor or the other, all on the same plane. It’s an inspired design that works beautifully and contributes mightily to the antics on stage.
All in all, there’s a lot of great work in this production. Yet it’s FastHorse’s thoughtful absurdity and the clever way she expresses it dramatically that rises to the top, informing every aspect of her subject while delighting her audience in the process.
She’s a talent to watch.
“Fake It Until You Make It,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 628-2772, www.centertheatregroup.org
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