On a moonlit July night in Barstow, Calif., strange, seductive things can happen, especially if you talk to the moon, which is portrayed as an aging, violin-playing dandy in a Panama hat and white suit.
Don't expect any literal answers from "References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot," Jose Rivera's surreal romance in which love, lust and longing mix it up, bewitching a 27-year-old housewife awaiting the return of her soldier-husband from overseas.
Rivera's intriguing fantasy opened Wednesday at off-Broadway's Public Theater. It celebrates the confusion that grows out of trying to understand not only the one you love but yourself as well. It is a meditation on the impossible, but told in a provocative manner by Rivera, a writer whose language manages to be poetic and earthy at the same time.
"I say the deepest secrets and the most confusing mysteries aren't on the moon, they're in the heart of the person who lies next to you in bed every night," wife Gabriela complains.
She has reasons for her suspicions. Husband Benito, still wearing his army fatigues, arrives home. He is ready to race to bed; she wants to talk about where they are going after sex.
Their conversations form the core of Rivera's play and reveal deep divisions between the couple. Benito sees the Army as security, even though his experiences, particularly in the Persian Gulf, still haunt his dreams. Gabriela sees her married life in the military as a dead end, refusing even to make friends with what she calls "those Barbie dolls your buddies are saddled with."
Their battles are well played by the evenly matched Rosie Perez and John Ortiz. Perez, in particular, shows Gabriela's vulnerability, the uncertainty behind a steely resolve to better her life. And Ortiz swaggers effectively as the brash, macho man content with what the military offers him.
Gabriela has other admirers, too. She is idolized by a 14-year-old neighbor. Actually, lusted after is more like it, and young Carlo Alban pulls off the hormonally active youngster with comic flair.
These more realistic sequences are in contrast with Gabriela's ethereal, often humorous conversations with not only the moon, but with her satisfied, thoroughly domesticated cat. This well-fed creature is wooed rather insistently by a coyote, whose dangerous freedom is an allure for the housebound animal.
The play strains a bit in these moments of fantasy, but director Jo Bonney makes sure the actors don't get carried away by the audacity of the concept.
It's not easy--or even wise--to portray animals on stage (although it didn't seem to hurt "Cats"). Yet Kristine Nielsen makes an appealing, even saucy feline, while Kevin Jackson exhibits a sexy fierceness as the coyote.
Michael Lombard plays the world-weary moon, eager to seduce Gabriela in any way possible. At one point, he enumerates a variety of things produced by a woman's tears. The laundry list includes sonatas, table manners, the zipper, the fables of Jorge Luis Borges and the title of a painting by a well-known surrealist artist. Which leads our heroine to burst forth with the title of Rivera's play. Her retort is a tad labored, but funny, touching and effective, much like what is on stage of the Public Theater.
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