In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Theatre Journal 52.4 (2000) 563-565



[Access article in PDF]

Performance Review

Letters From Cuba


Letters From Cuba. By Maria Irene Fornes. Signature Theatre Company, Peter Norton Space, New York, New York. 25 February 2000.

Compared to Sam Shepard (1996-97), Arthur Miller (1997-98), and even John Guare (1998-99), Maria Irene Fornes was a bold choice as the featured playwright for the 1999-2000 season of New York's Signature Theatre. Although widely admired in professional and academic circles, Fornes has never fared well in the mainstream, which made presenting a season of her work both risky and altogether appropriate for an off-Broadway theatre dedicated to re-kindling discussion about the United States's most important living playwrights. The Signature's Fornes season began with a double bill of Mud and Drowning, directed by David Esbjornson, and the New York premiere of Enter the Night, directed by Sonja Moser. The third and final offering, the only one directed by Fornes herself, was the world premiere of Letters from Cuba, perhaps her most personal play ever.

IMAGE LINK= Letters from Cuba is more a theatre poem than a play, a gossamer of words, music, movement, and light that reaches a simple, subtle epiphany. The piece, like many others by Fornes, is composed of short, fragmentary scenes. Nothing is forced, and [End Page 563] as a result, the world premiere production felt inchoate at moments, polished but also somewhat incomplete. The performance lasted barely an hour, short enough to be cryptic at times but long enough to gather a gentle and irresistible momentum yielding startling images of beauty and longing.

The narrative of Letters from Cuba takes place both in Cuba and the USA. In the production, most of the stage was filled by a large, plain, symmetrical, off-white room, designed with meticulous care by Fornes' long-time collaborator, Donald Eastman. In the down-left corner, an old, wooden drafting table cluttered with paraphernalia drew attention to the emptiness of the room around it. A small mattress on the floor in each of the upstage corners, two chairs, and a scrawny floor lamp were the only furnishings. The doors, the walls, the windows, and the pattern of the floorboards created enough unadorned rectangles to lend the box set an abstract dimension. The space seemed to echo.

This unruffled room represented the New York apartment shared by three young, aspiring artists: Marc (Matthew Floyd Miller), Joseph (Peter Starrett), and Fran (Tai Jimenez). They appeared in a series of brief, impressionistic scenes, each of which lasted just long enough to suggest a mood or to touch on a subject before it dissolved into the next. The three friends talked about art, love, and life. Marc woke Joseph from a nightmare. Fran gave ballet lessons to Jerry, the building's custodian (Peter Van Wagner). Marc and Joseph confessed to each other their love for Fran and got into a playful pillow fight. Most importantly, Fran received letters from her brother Luis in Cuba, letters that Fornes culled from hundreds which she received over the years from her own brother.

The character of Luis (Chris De Oni) appeared high above on an upper stage representing the roof of the building where he lived. He sat or stood there on a wide ledge, sometimes under a blanket of stars, reciting the letters sent to his beloved sister. He wrote of delays in emigrating to the USA, the birth of his son Enrique, the care packages Fran sent, the Caribbean weather, and so on. Eventually, Enrique (Rick Wasserman) appeared as a character, first as a child and later as an adolescent.

As the action pivoted back and forth between the apartment down stage and the roof upstage, a sense of separation developed between the two areas, the two siblings, and the two countries. No [End Page 564] sooner had that gulf been established than Fornes began to bridge it in suggestive and theatrical ways. As Luis wrote to Fran, she appeared on the roof, unnoticed, reaching out to him in longing. Luis dropped a letter from above that landed in the apartment below, where...

pdf

Share