Nilo Cruz's Beauty of the Father, now at Manhattan Theatre Club, is about a Spanish painter who converses with the ghost of Federico Garcia Lorca, the young man he is sexually involved with, his long-lost daughter whom he deserted as a child, and the woman friend with whom he shares his house.
The play is a mildly interesting, pretentious piece, all a bit twisted as the girl, after bedding the boy, tells him to go to bed with her father again. The dialogue is far from fascinating, and I'm not sure what the premise of the whole thing is. Perhaps director Michael Grief realized that we needed more entertainment from the play -- Act Two has some singing and dancing to suggest setting and mood, but it seems more fun for the performers than the audience. The dramatic conflict puts the boy in the middle, and it's all a kind of mish-mash of relationships with a pretense of profundity.
Mark Wendland's set, James F. Ingalls's mood lighting and Miranda Hoffman's costumes are all fine. Good luck.
