Seven Plays by Argentine Playwright Susana Torres Molina (review)

SPRING 2008 167 Book Reviews André, María Claudia, ed. Seven Plays by Argentine Playwright Susana Torres Molina. Trans. María Claudia André and Barbara Younoszai. New York and Ontario: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006: 228 p. This compilation of plays written by Torres Molina ranges from the years 1977 to 2005 and includes translations of her best-known works: Strange Toy, That’s All That, Mystic Union, Siren’s Song, Paradises Lost, Zero and She. André’s edited anthology provides the first large-scale collection of Torres Molina’s plays available in translation, and as such, has offered the English-speaking public unprecedented access to this playwright’s work. The benefits of this contact between Northern and Southern hemispheres cannot be underestimated, and André’s labors will most certainly broaden the scope of appreciation for Torres Molina’s talent. The plays are arranged in chronological order and offer the reader a glimpse into the evolution of Torres Molina’s style, as it develops from established structures and theatrical conventions toward a more experimental style; one that has been influenced by the image-based spectacles of Japanese Butoh forms. In addition, the book includes a preface by Jean Graham-Jones, an introduction by André, and André’s interview with Torres Molina. To conclude the book, André has incorporated a bibliography, divided into primary and secondary sources on and about Torres Molina’s plays. André’s additional information should be helpful to those encountering her work for the first time. However, those already familiar with the playwright’s work will notice that the introduction relies heavily on the observations of other critics without offering any new insight into Torres Molina’s drama. This seems an unfortunate oversight given the unique opportunity to present this dramatist to a new audience and reflect on a career that spans nearly thirty years. Equally disappointing is the interview, which has already appeared in another journal. Fresh insight would have further enriched this contribution to Torres Molina’s body of work. On a final note, the translations, for the most part, read effortlessly in English. Nevertheless, there does exist a fair amount of typographical errors and several inaccuracies in translation, which will be obvious to native-speakers of English. 168 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW In this collection, the first two plays, Strange Toy and That’s All That, contain the most concrete plots. The first is a metatheatrical work in which three characters repeat, invent and ultimately dismantle their roles as dowager sisters and a traveling salesman to explore their anxieties about control, violence, and appearances. The second play follows a group of male friends as they move through four periods in life, showing their closeness, hostility, nostalgia and hypocrisy. The following plays, Mystic Union, Siren’s Song and Paradises Lost, can all be grouped under the rubric of “experimental” for their lack of narrative storyline and stage directions, and for their emphasis on the importance of message over a linear development of action. Mystic Union is a tri-part look at the emotional and psychological impact of HIV/ AIDS on a woman, her male lover and the prostitute from whom he contracted the disease. Siren’s Song is a four-part monologue, in which a character moves through the stages of desire, loneliness, meaning and passion, in order to find and define the divide between soul and body. In Paradises Lost, a man and woman contemplate the complex meaning of their relationship, the definition of love and their sense of fulfillment as they hover on the brink of a break up. The final two plays, Zero and She, combine the sensibilities and styles of Torres Molina’s previous works, uniting the traditional with the experimental. In Zero, Torres Molina again plays with the notion of performance, though here it is experimented with in the form of gender roles and sexual desire as a woman hires a gay male prostitute. Like the first play Strange Toy, Zero is also metatheatrical as it calls attention to role-playing and the breakdown of clear boundaries between “reality” and illusion. Finally, She, which is comprised of a series of eleven brief tableaux between two male characters, relates the story...