Playwright: Nilo Cruz. At: UrbanTheater Company at the Wicker Park Art Center in St. Paul's Church, 2215 W. North Ave. Phone: 312-239-8733;$20. Runs through: Nov. 19
"In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world" said Federico García Lorca. Those skeptical of that claim need only look at Nilo Cruz's play, written in 2010 and set in 1998. Whom do we see and hear first onstage? Why, the ghost of Federico, himself—the rebel homosexual poet-journalist whose murder by Spanish Civil War death squads in 1936 and subsequent burial in a mass grave would elevate him to the status of patron saint to artists everywhere.
The artist, in this instance, is Emiliano, a painter/sculptor in the village of Salobreña, just outside of Granada. His household is composed of Paquita, his housekeeper and consort, and husband-of-convenience Karim, the Moroccan perfume-vendor whom Emiliano brought home to his bed one night, and whose temporary marriage is to facilitate his Spanish citizenship. Their happy ménage is about to be interrupted, however—Emiliano's grown daughter, raised in the United States by her recently-deceased mother, is coming to visit her long-estranged papi.
Even without a spectral Lorca invoking his trademark lunar eclipses, imp-like puppets, smoldering passions, premonitions of violence, wine-fueled ecstasies and the promise of duende—the dionysic defiance that moves people to reckless deeds—we anticipate family conflict arising from this premise. Is Emiliano and Karim's affection more filial than they are willing to admit? Is the latter simply a hustler whose flirtation with the pretty young American little more than an opportune upgrade? How much of Marina's attraction is fallout from her grief over her mother, and how much, the enchantment of being in a foreign country? What about Paquita, Emiliano's platonic paramour? Is she just a fag hag?
While we're at it, how much of the audience's opening night response to Cruz' lyrically lush language was ignited by guitarist Armando Quintero's live pre-show conte jondo, or the faded majesty of St. Paul's sanctuary-turned-playhouse? In this brand of drama, analysis is counterproductive, the measure of success lying instead in the degree to which we become emotionally engaged. Fortunately, UrbanTheatre company member Madrid St. Angelo has charisma to spare, his fiery Emiliano contrasting with the cool gallantry of Ivan Vega's Federico, their fraternal dynamic enhanced by appealing performances from Jasmin Cardenas as the naive Marina, Nicolas Gamboa as the winsome Karim and Mari Marroquin as the matronly Paquita, under Cecilie D. Keenan's sympathetic direction.
