Playwright: Reinaldo Povad. At: UrbanTheater Company/People*s Theater of Chicago at the Batey Urbano, 2620 W. Division. Phone: 773-371-1868; $20. Runs through: Dec. 13
Don't be fooled by the title. Our milieu is not the tropical West Indian island nation, but New York City's squalid Lower East Side district circa 1985, where "Cuba" is the name of a cocaine dealer whose adolescent son, Teddy, is reluctant to join the family business. Instead, the lad professes his desire for a career assurprise!a writer, mentored by a once-renowned author who happens to be a heroin addict. Other denizens of this underworld are Cuba's sidekick, marijuana-peddler Jackie. High-rolling pimp Redlights and his Top Girl, Lourdes. Oh, and a no-name freelance buyer whose abscessed leg forces him to walk with the aid of a staff topped by a grisly skull.
Well, can you think of anybody in this social circle with whom you could occupy the same room and not eventually find yourself conversing with a corpse? Whatever validity the distinction between drug supplier and drug user may exercise in this subculture, our concerned father is hardly in a position to disapprove of the company his boy keeps.
This brand of lurid face-in-the-grit fable has been a staple of popular fiction for centuries, but the late Reinaldo Povod savors his nothing-held-back confessional with the relish characteristic of ghetto-bred playwrights doomed to die youngin this case, of AIDS at age 34while still enmeshed in the throes of splenetic anguish, never to learn the value of editing as a tool to reconfiguring telenovela-length yarns to the restrictions of live performance. But if the thoroughness with which Povod portrays Teddy's childhood mentors makes for a long night, it also renders each potentially-stereotypical character refreshingly and three-dimensionally complex.
For this collaborative UrbanTheater/People*s Theater production, UTC member Marilyn Camacho directs a hard-working cast, led by Madrid St. Angelo and Christian Kain Blackburn, who deliver marathon performances as the troubled parent and progeny. Hank Hilbert, Julian Martinez, Kamal Hans, Ivan Vega and Erynn MacKenzie contribute likewise unclichéd portrayals of their various personae. And the entire ensemble is to be commended for their stamina, maintaining the energy and intensity at a high level even as their play's running time approaches the three-hour mark. Their effort makes a strong argument for increased support of Latino playwrights, if only to expand the repertoire of ambitious ethnic-based storefront companies beyond superannuated hankie-wringers like this debut by a talent left forever unfulfilled.