Playwright: Michael Frayn
At: Dog & Pony Theatre Company at the Cultural Center,
77 E. Randolph St.
Phone: (773) 871-1195; $15
Runs through: June 5
It's often said that travelers in a foreign country see only what they came to see. The three visitors to Cuba forced to share a car, guide and chauffeur are no exception. Owen Shorter is a British Sunday-supplement journalist, Ed Budge is an American professor from the midwest, and Mara Hill, also English, is an author of 'women's novels.' Owen knows nothing of Cuba and expects to find it squalid, but seductive. Ed knows nearly everything about Cuba and expects to find it struggling, but courageous. And nobody quite knows WHAT Mara expects. But as fatigue takes its toll, their disparate attitudes begin to grow blurred, until even Hilberto, their driver, and Angel (pronounced 'Ahn-HELL'), their host, are affected.
Playwright Michael Frayn is best known in OUR country as the author of the madcap farce, Noises Off. Resisting the temptation to play his wry observations at comic pace from the outset, however, director Devon de Mayo and his cast never tip us a wink or road sign, but instead allow the events to speak for themselves. (At first meeting, for example, Owen and Mara each assume the other to be Cuban and proceed to utter fatuities in phrase-book Spanish.) This renders the first act deceptively static—or is it only that its progress does not conform to OUR expectations regarding Anglo-Latin intrigues in exotic climes?
While we look for a coherent theme to emerge from the respective agendas (or wager at intermission on whose vision will ultimately triumph), this inaugural production by the Dog & Pony Theatre Company distracts us with impeccable (and uncredited) dialects, with Tariq Tamir's onstage exhibition of portraits, and not least, with chairs and tables intricately choreographed to depict an array of locales, bridged by Manny Sosa's guitar-backed renditions of Cuban songs.
We are also invited to note, along with the characters, the curious allure of the commonplace when contrasted with the unfamiliar—a key element in the story's resolution. In this aspect, Brian Rickel as the blustering Owen, Brendan Griffin as the idealistic Ed, Kathryn Daniels as the enigmatic Mara, Lyle Skosey as the phlegmatic Angel and Manny Sosa as the earthy Hilberto do not disappoint us.
