Photo Source: Michael Palma
This is Cuba in 1960, when the Castro revolution is beginning to take hold. In a theater basement, Leandra and Albertina labor over costumes. Former actors who have been put out to pasture as much for their counter-revolutionary views as their ages, they pin their hopes on their attractive niece Belén. When the young woman dates a wealthy American businessman who owns a factory in Cuba, the aunts see it as an opportunity to get the girl away from the island. Said businessman, Preston, has two problems: One, his factory is threatened with nationalizing; two, he entices Belén to act out a kinky fantasy in which she pretends to be his former lover.
While these personal conflicts are sorted out, Cuba's past and present clash. The past is represented by Carolina and Oscar, a wealthy American couple whose Cuban vacation home is also under siege. The present and possibly the future (the Bay of Pigs operation is on the horizon) are embodied by Orlando, a uniformed revolutionary with all the fervor and single-mindedness of the newly empowered. As fantasy and reality converge, Cuba is no longer "the place to grow older and die." The past is gone, the present is hell, and the future looks grim. Nightclubs with their fun and humor are in their last gasp. Capitalism seems to be dying too. "We are cursed," says one character, "The island is cursed."
Although production values are minimal, the actors lend complexity to underwritten roles, and director Michel Hausmann strives to get as much humor out of the script as possible. A moving, even frightening work that explores the Cuban revolution in terms of lives destroyed would be fascinating. Perhaps Cruz will get around to that one day.
Presented by and at Repertorio Español, 138 E. 27th St., NYC. Nov. 7–Dec. 16. Schedule varies. (212) 225-9999 or www.repertorio.org.
