notjustaboutsex

The only other time I saw a play by Irene Fornes was one in which a lovely, quite middle-aged male friend of mine surprisingly appeared naked. I was not prepared for that and so to be fair, I might have missed some of the finer points of the play.

A good friend of mine worked with Ms. Fornes at PS122 and so I was intrigued to give the playwright another chance to convince me of what makes her so special.

I’m not positive that Dogteam’s La Viuda was a good indication of her later more developed work, but it was intriguing. The production, action, set design and whimsy were terrific. To tackle a strange piece about characters who may or may not have existed, mostly talking about them through letter reading is very difficult and the players had fun.

Beautiful Angela, Jay Romero, first surprises, but in little time, the male perfectly embodies a woman of the mid-19^th century and we soon forget she is a he. (can I say that?)

The formality of the period is off set by the occasional broad humor …giving it a sort of early Bunuel quality …and so we never tire of all the stiff necks because surprising things happen that seem out of place and time.

Walking home from the show, my friend and I met up with Fidel Vicioso who plays Father Craavet brilliantly. He shared that it was a challenging play to tackle as the stories were perhaps true and perhaps not. That it was written with a sort of revenge story in mind…but that only the emotional history may be accurate. And his feelings for the mixed gender casting of Angela had something to do with Ms. Fornes and an adopted son and the anti gay politics of Cuba. The reader will have to do his/her/your / own research.

 There is a feeling of not being able to put your finger on the emotional truth of Angela as she may not really have known what was going on… which of course, is the way reality works. Here we have a woman standing in her stately living room waiting for her lost husband to return from Cuba. She imagines herself to be important to him, but if that were the case, why did he go off and have four children with another leaving an ill son back in Spain to wither away.

It is a good question as to what Ms. Fornes is trying to say. Do men abandon women? Does being a self-righteous prude have its downside? And is the self- imposed imprisoned life of a proper woman denigrating to the spirit of all women? If so, the play definitely succeeds.

There is a balletic moment where all the play’s characters don the widow’s black veiled hat that has fallen into their hands from the sky., giving the other characters the same opportunity to stand apart from the living with judgment, superiority and fundamentally fear.

All the actors did a wonderful job and I found myself falling head over hills for the young Salvador, Jacob Joseph.

Dogteam is a company with serious intentions and a great creative spark.

Show runs through this Weekend at Atlantic Theatre Stage 2.