'Fefu and Her Friends' is an unfriendly play

By William Glover

AP drama critic

NEW YORK The feminine mystique comes under fulsome scrutiny in "Fefu and Her Friends" with scrimpy dramatic results.

Maria Irene Fornes, its earnest author, quickly proclaims a militant lib purpose at the American Place Theater, where the piece opened for press review recently.

"My husband married me to have a constant reminder around how loathsome women are,” announces Fefu to the first of the seven companions who gather around her to analyze their gender's unhappy lot.

Once in a while during the discourse Fefu fires a rifle at her offstage, invisible husband in Russian roulette pastime. One of Miss Fornes' dilapidated metaphors has her spokeswoman bag, at last, a bloody rabbit.

The assembled group most conspicuously includes Julie, a wheelchair victim of emotional distress; Emma, who always thinks first of the malodorus areas of the human anatomy; and Paula, who does-doesn't seek lesbian reunion with statuesque Cecilia.

Miss Fornes mistakes dialetic for dialog and adds to audience distress by peculiar structural artifice. She also directs with considerable indulgence.

During the middle-third of the no-intermission piece, the spectators are led off in separate groups on a tour of improvised backstage areas where cast members repeatedly enact overlapping episodes of emotional travail.

Rebecca Schull is a Fefu of lackadaisical behavior, and the general acting quality around her is amateurish sincerity.

With "Fefu and Her Friends" around, a playgoer doesn't need an enemy.