Adventures of 2 fearless Stevenson women

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

Belle (Laura Bach) shares a laugh with her father, Robert Louis Stevenson (Eric Schonleber), in Kumu Kahua Theatre's "Fanny and Belle." Brad Goda 'Fanny and Belle' 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through April 10 Kumu Kahua Theatre $16-$5 536-4441 Belle's arrival in Honolulu, 1882 "It was early morning when we sailed into the harbor and saw the lovely city of Honolulu for the first time. Along the waterfront there were no big sheds then, only a wide esplanade, and no tall buildings marred the contour of the little town nestled among trees and palms ... [T]here were a number of people on the esplanade watching our arrival. I looked at them with great interest and was surprised by their elegance. The women all wore holokus ... bell shaped from the shoulders, and made of white or light colored muslin, elaborately trimmed with voluminous ruffles. In wide brimmed hats under curling ostrich plumes and gay little parasols the women looked cool and attractive. The men in white duck or flannels, their straw hats encircled by bands of peacock feathers or sea shells added to the tropical effect ... the islands were prosperous then, sugar was up and Hawaii belonged to the Hawaiians."

To be sure, the globe-spanning adventures of two fearless, independent women were hardly standard literary fare for 19th-century audiences. That the principal characters actually existed, that their refusal to accept societal expectations did indeed find them riding stage coaches in the American west, exploring the galleries of Europe, and dining with a Hawaiian king, are truths stranger perhaps than any fiction even Stevenson (Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) could produce.

Theirs is a story worth telling, and a small handful of historians and biographers have attempted over the years. Tonight Kumu Kahua Theatre and playwright Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl bring the lives of these two remarkable women to the stage in the new drama "Fanny and Belle."

"I think Fanny foreshadowed the contemporary (woman)," Kneubuhl said. "She had a sense of herself that she couldn't sublimate to 19th-century normality."

The piece, directed by John Wat, operates as a memory play, beginning and ending the night before Isobel "Belle" Osbourne is to deliver her mother's ashes to Vailima, Samoa.

Fanny comes alive through Belle's recollections, and the story of her ruinous first marriage, her redemptive discovery of art, her romance with Stevenson, and the travels she and Belle took together and separately unfolds in epic style.

In a sense, it's a story Kneubuhl has been primed to tell since her earliest encounters with language and the history of the Pacific.

"One of the first books that was read to me was (Stevenson's) 'The Child's Garden of Verses,'" Kneubuhl said. "And we've all come into contact with 'Treasure Island' and 'Kidnapped.' I've known Robert Louis Stevenson my whole life."

When she was 13, Kneubuhl, who is part Samoan, traveled with her family to Vailima, the final resting place of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson. "Back in the '60s it was really out of the way," she said. "But being there really made an impression on me."

Kneubuhl had read about Fanny and Belle (one of three children Fanny had with Sam Osbourne) and was intrigued, but it wasn't until she received a fellowship from the State Foundation for Culture and the Arts in 1996 that she was able to conduct her own in-depth research.

She finished her first draft of the play in 1999 and has made revisions several times leading up to the current staging. And yet, even with the piece finally complete, Kneubuhl said she can't help seeking out new leads.

"Just the other night I found another book," she said. "Usually at this point, I'm not that interested in my subject that much anymore. But I think I've turned into a Stevenson geek."

The fluidity of Kneubuhl's script and the scope of time and place represented was a challenge for Wat the director, who also directed Kneubuhl's "Ola Na Iwi" nearly a decade ago. Aside from a few costumes, some simple props and an open stage, Wat will rely on a versatile acting ensemble and Kneubuhl's evocative script to direct the audience's imagination.

While the play focuses on Fanny and Belle (who lived in Hawai'i for seven years with her artist husband Joe Strong, and was an acquaintance of King Kalakaua), author Stevenson does appear as a minor character.

"Some people suggested that he not be in it at all because he would draw too much focus away, but he was such a big part of their lives, and I felt it would be strange to be talking about him as an offstage presence," she said.