Sisterly squabbles, family tragedy and political history share the stage with three actresses in A Bearded Lover, a play getting a worthy world premiere at The Promethean Theater in South Florida.
The setting is specific: 3 a.m. in a house in a small town in Cuba on July 26, 1953. Autocrat Fulgencio Batista is back in power, the dashing Fidel Castro is on the move, and three grown sisters apparently aren't hanging around. They're putting their things in order -- an annual event in recent years as they prepare to leave the home they've shared most of their lives. Two sisters want to stop by a Catholic street festival; the other has a different idea.
The house fire that killed their parents when they were young left the sisters scarred and maimed. Delores, the eldest and most badly scarred by the fire, needs a cane to get around. Lucia (Gladys Ramirez), the youngest, uses a pair of too-short crutches to deal with a mangled leg. The middle sister, Ines (Ursula Cataan), occasionally complains of arthritis, sometimes uses a cane and almost always assesses the sisters' lives and prospects with unleavened cruelty. Clearly they're getting on each other's nerves. As Delores defends hiding a treasured baby blanket from the others: "Threads become worn under too much handling."
This is a very good play by Juan C. Sanchez, Promethean's playwright in residence.
It's spiked with secrets uncovered, a touch of melodrama and with many laughs -- especially in the first act.
Under the direction of Margaret M. Ledford, the satisfying result is one of contrasts and subtleties. The sisters are clothed in ankle-length black dresses, but the setting is a room painted in vibrant colors: a saturated turquoise on the back wall and a heathered red on a side wall. The red wall has three wall hangings, a crucifix flanked by two seeming tchotchkes: on the audience's right, a horseshoe, as if for luck; on the left, a nonspecific, wrought iron sculpture, basically a tall rectangle with an arched top and a swirl inside. But the wrought iron suggests the Greek letter alpha and the horseshoe approximates the Greek omega -- in Christian gospel, the beginning and the end. That may not be the intention of the set design, but it reflects A Bearded Lover as a tale of beginnings and endings. And if the wall hangings aren't intended to be Greek letters, viewing them that way nevertheless underscores an important plot point: Ines dreams of making a connection with Poseidon, the bearded Greek god of the sea.
As middle sister Ines, Ursula Cataan has an almost thankless job, freighted with a bossy, humorless, Poseidon-obsessed character. Big sister Delores, played by Deborah As Lucia, the youngest, Gladys Ramirez has a taxing physical task -- having to bend for the short crutches whenever Lucia has to pull her bad leg across the stage -- and earns the longest laugh of the play when Lucia likens Delores' new best friend, the unseen Rosario, to a snorting pig. This isn't a few one-liners, this is a comedic gem, a full-on assault delivered from a chair.
The production manages a fine line between comedy and tragedy. The ending has real power, but the second-act seriousness includes an appropriately awkward wrestle -- with laugh line tossed in -- that doesn't detract a bit from what's to come.
L. Sherman, is a self-described poetess, and Sherman gets laughs throughout as Delores interrupts conversations to jot down a phrase or worry over a preposition.
Opened:
February 18, 2011
Ended:
March 6, 2011
Country:
USA
State:
Florida
City:
Davie
Company/Producers:
The Promethean Theater
Theater Type:
Regional
Theater:
Nova Southeastern University - Black Box Theater
Theater Address:
3301 College Avenue
Phone:
786-317-7580
Website:
theprometheantheatre.org
Running Time:
2 hrs
Genre:
Comedy-DRama
Director:
Margaret M. Ledford
Review:
Parental:
profanity
Cast:
Ursula Cataan (Ines); Gladys Ramirez (Lucia); Deborah L. Sherman (Dolores);
Technical:
Set: Dan Gelbmann; Lighting: Robert Coward; Costumes/Makeup: Ellis Tillman; Sound: Matt Corey; Dramaturg: Jane G. Duncan; Fight Choreography: Taso Stavrakis; Production Stage Manager: Joseph M. Nesmith.
Other Critics:
MIAMI HERALD Christine Dolen ! SOUTH FLORIDA THEATER REVIEW Bill Hirschman + MIAMI ARTZINE Roger Martin + BROWARD-PALM BEACH NEW TIMES John Thomason X
Miscellaneous:
This is at least the third time Deborah L. Sherman and Ursula Cataan have played sisters: in 2008 they starred in Promethean Theater's staging of Nilo Cruz's <I>Two Sisters and a Piano,</I> and in 2002 in Coral Gables at the New Theater world premiere of Cruz's <I>Anna in the Tropics,</I> when Cataan was billed as Ursula Freundlich.
This is Juan C. Sanchez's third play at Promethean. His second, "Red Tide," was workshopped at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis in August 2007; Promethean's subsequent production of it played the Minnesota Fringe Festival in August 2008. The Promethean Theater is a professional theater in residence at Nova Southeastern University near Fort Lauderdale.
Critic:
Julie Calsi
Date Reviewed:
March 2011
