What a pleasure to see
Alejandro Rodriguez’s Alba go from
Dramaworks’ Perlberg Festival of New Plays to a fully staged production. It is
a very personal and affecting drama, although it still feels like a work in
progress. That, however, is how new plays develop, and being part of the
process can be rewarding for playwrights and audiences alike.
Alba is set
in unincorporated Miami in 2001 and was inspired by Federico GarcÃa Lorca’s
1936 masterpiece, The House of Bernarda
Alba. While the original features an all-female ensemble centered around
five daughters, Rodriguez’s adaptation reduces the family to three sisters. He
also makes a significant departure by adding a grandson, “the Poet,” who
narrates the play, uncovers buried family secrets, and tries to see the women
as more than their ostensible stereotypes, revealing them as layered, fully
realized individuals.
The playwright wanted to
take another look at Lorca. He has always loved Lorca’s plays but found their
productions “all mood, very heavy and dense.” Rodriguez brings the story back
home, from Spain to South Florida by way of Cuba.
Drawing on Lorca’s dramatic
structure while establishing his own voice, Rodriguez infuses the adaptation
with a visceral quality informed by personal experience and insight into the
Cuban immigrant’s plight, particularly that of women. Rodriguez’s passion resonates personally with my wife and me. Some of the dialogue is
in Spanish, but it is understandable in context and lends the play
authenticity.
Rodriguez doesn't bring
the play all the way up to the present. Instead, he sets it at the beginning of
this century, a dramatically useful transitional moment when new technology was
beginning to intrude on an older world but had not yet become the ubiquitous
presence it is today.
At the play’s center is
Alba, a fierce Cuban matriarch fighting to maintain control of her
working-class household in the face of that technology, unpaid debts, and a
suspicious suitor. Maggie Bofill makes her a compellingly controlling figure,
while allowing glimpses of the humanity beneath her formidable exterior.
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| Maggie Bofill as Alba |
The play opens in the
aftermath of the funeral of Alba’s second husband. Alba lays down the law: her
daughters will observe the proper decorum of mourning, receive guests, and
remain in mourning until she releases them. Otherwise, what would the neighbors
think? Alba is obsessed with protecting the family’s reputation, a recurring
theme that governs much of what follows.
The family home is
practically another character in the play. It is multigenerational, a
repository of family history, and a prison as well. “It all begins with that
pink house,” the Poet observes. Alba makes her position unmistakable when she
tells her daughters, “This is my house!”
Her three daughters
respond to their mother’s authority in different ways, sometimes finding common
ground and sometimes driving one another apart. Their relationships with one
another alternate between competition and affection.
 |
| Monica Quintero, Barbara Bonilla, Diana Garle, Dayana Morales, Maggie Bofill, Gianna DiGregorio |
The youngest, Adela, is
the rebel, flaunting the traditions that bind her family. She is the modern
woman, played by Diana Garle with defiant passion. Garle is the only member of
the cast who has appeared at Dramaworks before; the other actors are making
their PBD debuts. Adela feels trapped while her classmates travel and go to
concerts. She, meanwhile, is stuck listening to “Father Morales’ homilies.”
The middle sister, Amelia,
is the smart one, and what else, she’s in therapy. Played by Gianna DiGregorio
Rivera, Amelia brings a more reflective voice to the family conflict. She
articulates a central dilemma of the immigrant experience: “You think Mom chose
to be here? You don't think she’d prefer to be back in Cuba with her cousins
and aunts?” Is Amelia simply making excuses for her mother, or does she
understand something her sisters don’t? Her perspective adds another dimension
to the family struggle, even as she gets caught up in the competition among the
sisters.
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| Gianna DiGregorio, Barbara Bonilla, Dayana Morales |
The eldest, Angie, is 29
and played by Dayana Morales. Her deep religious convictions and fear of
becoming an old maid have left her vulnerable. She is engaged to Roman, the son
of a neighbor, who turns out to be interested in more than her affections. He
has his eye on her eventual inheritance from her biological father, Alba’s
first husband, which is a source of tension in its own right. The stage is set
for a family struggle in which each daughter tries, in her own way, to resist
Alba’s controlling personality.
Beyond the four central
women, three other characters help fill in the picture.
Barbara Bonilla plays
Yolanda, Alba’s childhood friend. Bonilla brings considerable humor to the
role, including some memorable physical comedy. Yolanda also serves as a voice
of reason and a buffer between Alba and her daughters, though she too remains under
Alba’s spell. Recalling Alba as a young woman, she says affectionately, “Alba
was one of the best salseras in all of La Habana.”
Yolanda offers a glimpse
of a different Alba, allowing us to see the matriarch as something more than
the tyrant she has become. The play also hints that the two women shared more
than friendship, although that possibility is never fully explored. Yolanda is
one of the production’s most engaging characters, thanks in large part to
Bonilla’s sparkling performance
Then there is Josefina,
Alba’s mother and the girls’ grandmother, or “abuela.” Suffering from dementia,
she is a link to the past and its buried secrets, a kind of truth teller who
reveals what the family would rather leave unspoken. Mary Lou Simo brings
considerable pathos to the role, although I found the character’s function in
the larger drama less clear. Perhaps this is something to consider as the play
develops further.
Gladys, played by Monica
Quintero, is a healthcare worker from Honduras to whom Alba always seems to owe
money. Although hers is a smaller role, she delivers one of the play’s bluntest
lines: “We [in Honduras] did not know the type of unhappiness that I have seen
in this house.” Her portrayal of a beleaguered caretaker made us keenly feel
her exasperation.
Finally, there is the
unnamed Poet, the playwright’s stand-in, who breaks the fourth wall and frames
the story as a memory play. He is Adela’s son, conceived during her affair with
Roman, and his presence allows the family history to be examined from a
distance, even as he remains emotionally implicated in it. Matthew Ferro has
the challenging task of making this personal journey believable, giving voice
to Rodriguez’s perspective while also conveying the pain, regret, and tragedy
of the story’s conclusion.
At the heart of the
conflict is Adela’s love for Roman, who is engaged to her older half-sister,
Angie. Along the way, however, the play sometimes falls back on familiar, even
stereotypical, observations. “It’s such a cruel joke being born a woman,”
Amelia observes, a sentiment that speaks to the limitations imposed on the
daughters by their mother, their culture, and their circumstances.
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| Matthew Ferro as The Poet |
The play also offers a
glimpse of the digital world as it was emerging at the turn of the millennium.
When Alba learns that naked pictures of a neighbor’s daughter have appeared
online, her incredulous response is, “On the computer?” Computer pornography
was hardly new even then, but the exchange seems almost quaint today, when
artificial intelligence can generate images that never existed in the first
place. The Poet also reveals that his grandmother had an older brother who
committed suicide because he was gay, another family secret that exposes the
destructive power of shame.
For all its familiar
elements, Alba has much to offer. Its
examination of family, cultural identity, repression, and the immigrant
experience gives the story contemporary resonance, even as it remains rooted in
an earlier time. The acting throughout is another of the production's
strengths.
Director KJ Sanchez keeps
the play moving at a good clip, maintaining the audience’s interest. As the
denouement approaches, however, a couple of choices left me wondering whether
the staging or the script might benefit from further consideration.
In a confrontation between
Adela and Amelia, the middle sister threatens to expose Adela’s affair with
Roman to Angie. The exchange takes place almost entirely offstage, in the
laundry room at stage left, making it difficult for a substantial portion of
the audience to see and, at times, hear an important confrontation. The
concluding scene, too, did not have the emotional impact I had anticipated.
Given the weight of what has preceded it, I had hoped for a stronger response.
As a fully staged
production, though, Alba has much to
recommend it, including some effective technical work. Brian O’Keefe’s costume
design establishes the characters and the period while providing considerable
variety. Alba’s deepest black mourning ensemble, militaristic and starched in
the opening scene, exposes her personality before she speaks a word.
Robert Aguilar makes his
PBD debut as lighting designer. Interestingly, the program identifies him as a
specialist in working with new plays, which made me think about the particular
challenges of lighting a production without a road map provided by previous
stagings. Aguilar also views lighting as a narrative tool. At several crucial
moments, the stage shifts abruptly from full illumination to partial darkness,
reflecting the changing nature of the conflict. The effect is striking, if
occasionally unexpected.
Roger Arnold’s sound
design also makes its presence felt, with outside sounds entering at key
moments, including when doors open and when shots are fired. I have
deliberately avoided discussing the latter in detail to avoid spoilers.
Tanya Orellana, also
making her PBD debut, has created a serviceable and visually attractive set.
For me, however, the design did not fully convey the cultural environment or the
strained economic circumstances of the family.
So, if you want to
experience the development of a new play and immerse yourself in a cultural
world that is perhaps different from your own, Alba offers an engaging opportunity, even if not every element is
fully realized. There is much to learn from the world Rodriguez has created,
and the production offers plenty to discuss afterward.
As Angie says, “We either
love each other or we don’t.” That question may linger in your mind, too.
All
photographs except for the stage and program by Coastal Click Photography
