REVIEW: Fake It Until You Make It (Arena Stage)

It’s sure nice to be back in DC — I’ve just returned from a two-week jaunt on the west coast with my friends. And while as scenic as it is out there, and as delicious the tacos, I do miss my 60-degree dew points and thick, loud thunderstorms. Disappointingly, I wasn’t able to catch any theatre, though I did take not of several that caught my eye. But I knew a break from shows would be healthy for the critical part of my brain, and so I was looking forward to being welcomed by a fellow returnee from Los Angeles, the workplace comedy Fake It Until You Make It from Native (Lakota) playwright Larissa FastHorse, at Arena Stage. Unfortunately, the result of this rampaging attempt at gawdy, self-referential politics is a shot in the foot that doesn’t quite hit the notes it wants to.

Book

Fake It follows an ever-deepening triad of appropriation via the antics of the Los Angeles nonprofit scene. Wynona is a Native woman in charge of “N.O.B.U.S.H.” — the jokes write themselves ad infinitum—whose mission is to eradicate an invasive species of bush that is common in landscaping in favor of native flora. (I can get behind that.) With her in her mission is her equally-driven partner whom she likes but doesn’t love, a White man called Theo. One day, a new business called Indigenous Nations Soaring moves in, led by a White woman, River; there begins a competition for a new grant given by an Indigenous gambling organization. On the sidelines is Krys, a Native person in charge of a two-spirit pride activism organization, and Grace, a Native woman whose goals involve the normalization of “race-shifting”.

FastHorse has some recent notoriety under her belt for being the first Native American woman to have a play on Broadway via 2023’s warmly-recieved The Thanksgiving Play. This is undeniably a huge step for representation in the American theatre, and I commend her for her strides in Native storytelling.

Which makes it all the more baffling that Fake It is such a confounding, spoiled mess of storytelling. In its attempts to broaden the scope of her societal critiques into other (touchier) subjects, the writing grows hydra heads of miscued skewering. This can be anything from jokes simply falling flat, to entire narrative elements being downright offensive to the very groups the book attempts to laugh with, not at. How was an opportunity to display a well-rounded and interesting two-spirit character fumbled SO badly, reduced to the tiresome trope of “promiscuous pansexual”? Such entanglement reaches a head in the final third when Grace’s "race-shifting” device enters a severely uncomfortable territory of comparison with being trans. Perhaps in a Biden-era environment audiences could look past this, but since January—the play ostensibly takes place now, in the throngs of Trump 2.0— it reads less as a silly jab and more of a lean into problematic ideals that harm instead of critique. But even looking beyond this, the actual storylines are hard to follow and reliant on door-slamming farce with no heft; a Noises Off-flavored La Croix. There are three “Mark”s, a lead with seemingly no depth, several plot pivots, and by the end of it — spoiler alert — the only actual Native woman in the book ends up being Grace, whose presence is devoid of purpose and only becomes more grating over the 90-ish minute runtime. Beneath these plots are also a running “gag”, if you can call it that, involving a missing cat that like the central nonprofit is also similarly named to vaginal vernacular. Let me say now, since the content warning doesn’t, that the level of sadism and cruelty afflicted to that animal is simply terrible: it’s stabbed, thrown at walls, yanked, and ultimately literally baked alive as an unfunny joke that negates any good intentions that the characters express. (Call me sensitive, since I just had to go two weeks without seeing my own cat, but it leaves “dark humor” territory in favor of outright shock after the first few bouts of rowdiness.) 0/10

Acting

The ensemble is spirited, but can’t overcome the torrid book. I didn’t find anyone that particularly stood out, but each did embrace their character with power (for better or for worse). Something that I did wonder during this viewing is why it needed to be set in Los Angeles — DC is something of a nonprofit hub, and the understudy list includes DC-area Native performers. Importing this Los Angeles cast for this production when there’s a capable DC-area group that can tell this story just as, if not more, effectively seemed like a missed opportunity to broaden its impact across all of the potential theatres on this country’s unceded land. 1/10

Production

What I can’t fully disparage is Sara Ryung' Clement’s zinelike set design, which rotates between the atrium of an old warehouse-turned-office to a wheeled-in array of offices, each decorated with nonprofit jargon and office supplies that feel natural. Additionally, the inclusion of Native artists for the musical intertitles (John Nobori) and the handwoven costumes by E.B. Brooks were decent choices. 5/10

Viz

The program art does try to include elements of the plot, including DNA and a cat in Native headdress, but nothing really explains about what’s to happen besides a potentially meager comedy. On the other hand, River Garza’s mural that dominates the set is striking — even if it is derivative of Basquiat. 2/10

Verdict

Fake It Until You Make It is a calamitous wannabe-farce of the nonprofit world that falls short of nearly all of its satires without enough performance or technical charisma to back it up. 8/40