Although Eddie Redmayne was nominated for an Academy Award for “The Danish Girl,” he regretted taking on the role of Lili Elbe, as he told an interviewer several years later, because she was a transgender woman and he is not.
A decade after the 2015 film, a transgender woman is now portraying Lili Elbe, in “Lili/Darwin,” a solo show written and performed by Darwin Del Fabro. The play is best viewed as a work in progress: While often lyrical and passionately expressed, there is little dramatic incident to anchor it.
Elbe (1882 – 1931) was a Danish painter who kept a diary of her transition, which led to a book that was published posthumously entitled “Man Into Woman.”
“I was thirteen when I first held this book in my hands…. It was a reflection of my own struggles,” Darwin Del Fabro, a Brazilian-born writer and performer, tells us at the start of “Lili/Darwin.” The production, we’re told, marks her return to the stage after her own gender transition.
In alternating monologues, Del Fabro portrays Lili in the 1920s in Denmark and Germany, and Darwin herself a century later in Brazil and New York, to which she moved at age 18.
The first-person accounts reveal similar feelings of ambivalence and insecurity. Both complain about being treated like dolls. Each expresses anxiety and joy at meeting a gentleman who treats them seriously – which is to say, as a woman. Both detail the difficulty of their surgery.
What they say is so similar that it’s not always clear who is speaking. The blurring may be the point. But the absence of many concrete stories to differentiate them has the surely unintentional consequence of reducing both individuals to little more than their feelings and their surgery.
On her return to Brazil for the surgery, Darwin talks of men who “turn us into objects they can want in private and despise in public,” then declares defiantly:
“So look at me. Look at my long hair, my painted lips, the sway in my walk.Look at everything you desire and everything you fear. I will not hide. Not in the daylight, not in the dark.”
This is powerful stuff, but would be stronger if it were attached to some specifics.
Darwin Del Fabro is an impressive performer. There is a gracefulness to the way she moves and an elegance to the way she speaks; it’s no surprise that her bio indicates an extensive background in musical theater and as a recording artist. She exhibits moments of such intensity in “Lili/Darwin” that I thought that she would make a great Medea. But the script she has devised is not commensurate with her talents, and the intensity feels excessive for the thin characters she has created. My hope is that, if she wishes to continue with “Lili/Darwin” past its current brief run, that she’ll rethink it, allowing Lili and Darwin (or just one of them) a fuller life, and more opportunities to breathe.
Lili/Darwin
The Tank through August 23
Running time: 75 minutes no intermission
Tickets: $20 to $40
Written and performed by Darwin Del Fabro
Directed by Meghan Finn.
