‘Alba’ at Palm Beach Dramaworks: A Cuban Family Under Pressure

 

 

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 García 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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

The PBD Academy's The World Goes ’Round: Broadway Begins Here

  

My face still hurts less than 24 hours after seeing The World Goes 'Round, the acclaimed revue built around the music of John Kander and Fred Ebb.

 

Why does my face hurt?

 

Never before in all my years of seeing musicals and playing the songs from the Great American Songbook that emerged from many of those musicals have I smiled so much, even tearing up at times to the point that I couldn't tell whether it was laughter born of the joy knowing the future of such music is assured, or whether I was mourning the passing of a time now seemingly threatened by the rapid erosion of so many of the cultural and political values I have cherished throughout my life.

 

I would like to think it is the former, and I will concentrate on the joy here. In full disclosure, I was not prepared to write a review of this show, failing to bring my trusted notebook and pen. I expected a superb student performance. Instead, I found myself watching a production that, in every important respect, matched the professionalism of many musicals Ann and I have seen on Broadway and locally.

 

So, here is my reaction to this production. Attention must be paid!

 

This is the culmination of Palm Beach Dramaworks' summer Academy, an intensive training program that offers aspiring young actors and stage managers the rare opportunity to work under professional conditions. Guided by the company's Director of Education and Community Engagement, Gary Cadwallader, the students rehearse in the same theater, with many of the same artistic standards and production values that distinguish Palm Beach Dramaworks' regular season. The result is far more than a school production; it is an opportunity for exceptionally talented young performers to test themselves in an environment where excellence is expected.

 

Pictured clockwise from bottom, Tristan Dominquez, Kayla Brown, Max Leighton, Danica Slavin, Bella Catania, Photo by Jason Nuttle

Cadwallader not only selected The World Goes 'Round, but directed it as well, and his directorial hand is evident throughout. Rather than telling a single story, the revue, conceived by Scott Ellis, Susan Stroman, and David Thompson, seamlessly weaves together nearly two dozen songs by Kander and Ebb—from familiar classics such as Cabaret, Chicago, and New York, New York to lesser-known gems—creating a showcase of the remarkable range, wit, humor, and emotional depth of one of Broadway's greatest songwriting partnerships.

 

When it opened Off-Broadway in March 1991, Ellis was the director and Stroman the choreographer. Her original choreography is faithfully reproduced here by Cadwallader, making such amusing numbers as the ode to “Sara Lee” baked goods and the delightful "Coffee in a Cardboard Cup" thoroughly inventive and memorable.

 

Assistant director Elizabeth Dimon, another Palm Beach Dramaworks veteran, also deserves recognition. An accomplished actress and singer herself, she clearly helped these young performers understand that acting a song is every bit as important as singing it. Brian O'Keefe's costumes added immeasurably to the fun, particularly in the number "Class," the delicious duet that appeared in the stage version of Chicago but was inexplicably omitted from the film. That number reduced my smile to tears of laughter.

 

Roger Arnold's sound and projection designs were seamlessly integrated into the production, while Genny Wynn's lighting consistently drew the eye exactly where it belonged. Kudos, too, to musical director Lisa Stephens, who played the keyboard along with a five-piece orchestra. These are among the professionals whose talents helped elevate this production while giving the young performers the support they deserved.

 

Having played the scores from many Broadway musicals on the piano myself, I couldn't help but recognize similar sensibilities in the music and lyrics that occasionally recalled Stephen Sondheim's contribution to the Broadway musical and even Jacques Brel's to the French chanson. There are songs throughout the Kander and Ebb canon that sometimes channel the spirit of those masters. As far as songwriting teams are concerned, Kander and Ebb deserve to be remembered in the same breath as Rodgers and Hammerstein. As a revue, The World Goes 'Round stands comfortably alongside Side by Side by Sondheim and Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, both of which, not too coincidentally, Palm Beach Dramaworks produced in its salad days before occupying the Don and Ann Brown Theatre.

 

Here I am raving about the content and professionalism of the production, but let's hear it for the student performers: Kayla Brown, Bella Catania, Tristan Dominquez, Max Leighton (all from Dreyfoos School of the Arts), and Danica Slavin (Cardinal Newman High School). What remarkable talent, discipline, and dedication. I only hope I am around long enough to follow their professional careers. It is impossible to single out the individual virtues of each performance because they functioned so beautifully as an ensemble. Their impressive vitae, along with the complete song list, can be found in the photographs from program below.

 

If there is a criticism to be made, some might argue that the program is too long. I found myself thinking just the opposite. There are enough wonderful Kander and Ebb songs left untouched that one could easily imagine The World Goes 'Round, Part II.

 

Thank you, Palm Beach Dramaworks and the young members of The Academy, for bringing tears of joy—and hope for the future.

 

The Crucible at Palm Beach Dramaworks: A Landmark Production of Power and Relevance

 

Tragic and transcendent, this Palm Beach Dramaworks production echoes the Shakespearian tradition, masterfully tracing the fatal flaws of its characters and the society itself that binds them. From its haunting opening scene to the sobering truth of its conclusion, it excels in every dramatic respect: acting, tempo,
direction, and stagecraft. The audience was visibly stunned on opening night by this three-plus hour landmark production (including intermission), erupting into a standing ovation.

 

Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953 as a metaphor for the McCarthy hearings, using the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials of 1692 as his historical framework. He adopted the stylized language of that era, achieving a rhythmic effect beautifully rendered here. The play feels all the more relevant given today’s political landscape, making Salem’s madness uncomfortably current. Religious fanaticism is alive, well, and encouraged. We may not be hanging “witches,” but we have increasingly become victims of the disappearing line between religion and state, logic and hysteria.

 

When a group of girls in Puritan Salem are caught dancing in the woods, they ignite a lethal witch hunt to escape punishment. Led by the vengeful Abigail Williams, they accuse innocent neighbors of witchcraft, plunging the community into religious mania. John Proctor attempts to debunk the girls’ lies to save his accused wife, but his efforts are compromised by his past indiscretions with Abigail. Caught in the court’s trap, he is pressured to sign a false confession to avoid hanging. Ultimately, he refuses to validate a dishonest system, choosing death over a tarnished name.

 

The Crucible is about compulsory theocratic conformity and the consequences of not obeying the state. Personal grudges and the hunger for recognition blossom into accusations, and as the drama unfolds, it gathers unstoppable momentum, with virtually every character complicit. Accusations form an ever-expanding circle: once one name is spoken, others follow in a litany of “I saw…with the Devil,” until the cry goes out, “Let the marshal bring in the irons!”

 

What is desperately needed is for someone to stand up and say no.

 

In 1692, John Proctor was that person.

 

Cat Boynton and Tom Patterson

The play ultimately asks whether we would join him. Our “community” today may not be a small New England town, but on national and global stages the same dynamics are amplified by social media and the culture of public shaming. That is what makes this production feel so immediate and urgent in an age of extreme political polarization. As Miller himself put it, “the play seems to present the same primeval structure of human sacrifice to the furies of fanaticism and paranoia that goes on repeating itself forever.”

 

Palm Beach Dramaworks’ Producing Artistic Director, William Hayes, also directs this production, bringing a unified vision to its conception and execution. In selecting the play for this season he recognized its increasing relevance. Hayes brought together an outstanding ensemble and shaped an approach that emphasizes the play’s central tensions: religious fervor, fear and hysteria, the dangers of theocracy, and the fragile but essential role of personal integrity. While he has directed scores of plays, this may well be his masterpiece, years in the making, including his research into Arthur Miller’s primary documents. That painstaking and passionate work is evident throughout.

 

In an inspired and somewhat uncharacteristic touch, Hayes positions actors in the audience at the opening of each act, chanting hymns of the era (researched by Bruce Linser) before moving to the stage—drawing us into the world of the play from the outset and making us, uncomfortably, part of the community being judged.

 

Tom Patterson and Elisabeth Yancey

Tom Patterson (PBD debut) plays John Proctor, the even-keeled yet quick-tempered farmer, both physically and dramatically imposing. Authority is antithetical to him, yet he carries the guilt of his affair with Abigail like an ever-present weight. Patterson sustains a palpable tension between restraint and eruption, particularly in his scenes with Abigail, where desire, anger, and moral revulsion uneasily coexist. He gives Proctor a near-Shakespearian sense of consequence, a man fully aware that his past actions have set forces in motion that he can no longer control, culminating in a cathartic refusal to sign a false confession: “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life…”

 

Elisabeth Yancey and cast of The Crucible

Abigail Williams is played by Elisabeth Yancey, last seen at Dramaworks in Lobby Hero. She stands apart even in stillness, her facial expressions and body language constantly engaged with the action. In contemporary terms, she might be described as a vengeful influencer, weaponizing charisma to manipulate public sentiment while pursuing the removal of Elizabeth Proctor. Yancey captures both the jealousy and desire that fuel Abigail’s actions, driving the accusations with chilling conviction.

 

Julie Kleiner, Gary Cadwallader, Tom Patterson, Andy Prosky, Elisabeth Yancey

Julie Kleiner, a veteran South Florida actress making her PBD debut, plays Elizabeth Proctor with quiet, unwavering virtue that can read as distance or restraint. Known in the village as a paragon of integrity, she delivers one of the play’s most piercing lines to her husband: “The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you.” Kleiner effectively conveys the tension between acceptance and judgment, ultimately guiding her husband toward his final moral choice.

 

Tom Patterson and Andy Prosky and ensemble cast

Deputy Governor Danforth is portrayed by Andy Prosky (previously seen at Dramaworks in The Humans), projecting the authority and arrogance of a man more concerned with preserving the court than seeking truth. His rigid logic regarding invisible crimes underscores the danger of absolute certainty. Prosky plays him with a stark, almost binary force with no shades of gray.

 

Nick Jordan, another PBD newcomer, plays Reverend John Hale, initially eager and intellectual, later tormented by his complicity. His growing desperation is palpable as he attempts to undo the damage he helped create.

 

Tom Wahl, Rob Donohoe, Nick Jordan, John Leonard Thompson, Margery Lowe

Tom Wahl masterfully portrays the insecure and authority-seeking Reverend Parris, shifting from righteous zeal to palpable anxiety as the consequences of the court’s actions begin to threaten his own position. He maintains a constant undercurrent of unease, a man whose authority is rooted more in fear than conviction.

Julie Kleiner, Tom Patterson, and Cat Boynton

 

Cat Boynton’s Mary Warren is particularly affecting, her fear and anxiety building steadily as she is pulled between Proctor and Abigail. In the pivotal courtroom scene, Boynton begins with a fragile, halting attempt to tell the truth, her voice small against the authority surrounding her. But as the other girls, led by Abigail, erupt into a frenzy, convulsing, mimicking, and feeding off one another’s hysteria, Boynton’s composure visibly fractures. Drawn into their collective energy, she collapses back into their orbit, a chilling demonstration of how fear and social pressure can overwhelm individual conscience. It becomes one of the production’s most powerful sequences, where performance and direction converge to disturbing effect.

 

Karen Stephens brings both mysticism and survival instinct to Tituba, a Barbados slave in the Parris household, while Rob Donohoe (as Giles Corey) balances comic timing with principled defiance, refusing to name names even at great personal cost.

 

While these are some of the key performances, this is truly an ensemble achievement. Miller structures the play so that each character contributes to its inexorable momentum, and Hayes fully realizes that vision. The remainder of the cast includes many familiar faces to South Florida audiences, Barbara B. Bradshaw (Rebecca Nurse), Gary Cadwallader (Judge Hathorne), John Campagnuolo (Hopkins), Kaia Davis (Betty Parris; PBD debut), Peter W. Galman (Francis Nurse), Hannah Haley (Mercy Lewis), David A. Hyland (John Willard, and Fight Director), Margery Lowe (Ann Putnam/Sarah Good), Natalie Donahue McMahon (Susanna Walcott; PBD debut), John Leonard Thompson (Thomas Putnam), and Seth Trucks (Ezekiel Cheever; PBD debut). They form a cohesive and compelling whole.

 

The technical elements of this production do far more than support the performances—they actively deepen the sense of dread and inevitability that drives the play.

 

Scenic designer Doug Wilkinson (PBD’s technical director making his design debut with the company) creates a world that reflects both the period and the moral decay beneath it: wide-plank floors, stark architecture, and a looming central tree that feels almost sentient. It suggests both the forest of the opening and something more ominous, as if the Devil himself might be concealed within it, its branches reaching outward toward the audience.

 

Brian O’Keefe’s costumes adhere to the austere Puritan aesthetic, largely monochromatic but with subtle distinctions, lace-trimmed collars, variations in texture, and touches of color among the girls, that quietly define character and hierarchy. John Proctor’s leather garb and boots set him apart as both a farmer and an individualist. Jane Lynch adds further distinction with her wig designs for most of the characters.

 

José Santiago’s (PBD debut) lighting design is especially effective in shaping the emotional arc, intensifying as hysteria builds, softening in the rare moments of calm, and repeatedly drawing focus to the omnipresent tree, which becomes a visual barometer of the play’s mood.

 

Roger Arnold’s sound design underscores the production with a continuous sense of foreboding—dissonant tones, thunder, church gongs, and hymns woven through scene transitions. There is percussive rhythm to it, a drumbeat that propels the action toward its inexorable conclusion.

 

Adam J. Thompson’s projections add a spectral layer—mist, memory, and the suggestion of unseen forces—culminating in haunting reminders of the human cost of the hysteria, real-life names and ages that transform abstraction into stark reality.

 

Assistant director and choreographer Jessica Chen contributes significantly, particularly in the striking opening sequence where movement and staging combine to create one of the production’s most memorable images.

 

This magnificent production, whether it evokes 1692, 1953, or today, is a poignant reminder that Palm Beach Dramaworks is one of the nation’s leading regional theaters. Arthur Miller once said that Laurence Olivier’s 1965 National Theatre production was the finest staging of The Crucible he had seen. One wonders what he would say about this one. William Hayes has created a work worthy of the West End or Broadway, and we are fortunate to have a performance of this caliber right here in West Palm Beach, if only through April 19.

 

The Cast of The Crucible

 Photographs by Jason Nuttle Photography, except for the stage itself and the program cover