| Apr. 3rd, 2004 @ 12:57 am Trio by Norge Espinosa Mendoza |
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Now Feeling: cool
Just got back from seeing Trio starring Ian McKellen with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) auralonde.
OMG, how cool was that?
Less than a tenner for a seat in the second row on the centre aisle in a theatre that only seats about 80 people to watch Ian McKellen star in a brand new play. I love small, intimate theatres like that.
Cast:
Adoracion - Ian McKellen
Ismael - Michael Maloney
Isaac - Daniel Evans
Angel - Hans Matheson
OMG! I knew I knew who Hans Matheson was. I was in Stella Does Tricks with him! I wish I'd realised, I could have gone and talked to him. I should do my research in advance, I am a moron. *kicks self hard*
Anyway, the review...
Actually it was a reading of a play not a play itself, but really that was quite sufficient for the most part. There were a few areas where the style became a little surreal, specifically in the more obviously physical parts of the play where there was a fight or a physical confrontation and it was hard to juxtapose the narration with wgat you were seeing and hearing, and I was sorely disappointed that the actor playing Angel didn't actually take his clothes as the narrator read out things like "He takes off his shirt" as he was pretty cute. But there was one point where Adoracion does a song and dance number where I think the effect of the narrator describing what we were meant to see was probably more powerful than if they had actually staged it. You could really get the feel of it in your mind.
The play itself is about an old Cuban cross dresser and performer (Adoracion) who now lives in Miami visiting his gay nephew in Havana. It is the last night of his two week stay. His nephew (Ismael) and his nephew's boyfriend (Isaac) have arranged for a prostitute (Angel) to come over and give hima good send off but Isaac has actually sabotaged the situation to try and make sure Adoracion doesn't come back to visit. Isaac and Adoracion don't like each other. Adoracion wants to ask Ismael to come back to Cuba with him.
Adoracion is the most solidly portrayed character with the most lines and it is easy to get ahold of the character and understand him and where he is coming from. He misses the old days which in a way perhaps never even existed, he comes from the old Cuba before everything fell apart and he finds it hard to be an old queer in a gay culture which celebrates youth and beauty, but he copes as you suspect he has coped with everything life has thrown at him. In love with company but in the end always alone, always a performance to hide the fear that the real person is not good enough. He talks to the ghost of a long gone lover, Pepe, in the end we are unsure if Pepe was ever a real person or just a name used for many failed romances.
Harder to grasp are Ismael and Isaac. At the start we are led to believe Ismael is the good boy and Isaac the problem, but Ismael is certainly not everything he seems at first. A painter, then a painter who doesn't paint, then a painter destroyed by the oppression of the Cuban system, and finally a darker side yet when it is revealed that he spends the money his uncle send him on male prostitutes, and curioser yet he paints on them, on their bodies, rather than on canvas. Isaac could easily be the enemy of the piece but he is far too hard to pin down for that. A rent boy Ismael picked up three years ago, now his lover. We don't hear enough from him to understand his motives or his relationship with Ismael. We are tantalised with the potential disfunctionality in a short scene wher Ismael physically and emotionally dominates Isaac sexually when he confronts him about setting up Adoracion with Angel. This is not behaviour we would have expected from Ismeal previous to this, nor a position we would have expected to see Isaac put in.
Angel is the catalyst, he is brought in to cause the changes and revelations that occur. His characterisation is not complex and it is the smallest role. He works as a male prostitute for money alone and several times brings up his girlfriend as if to prove he's not actually gay.
The play is about the breaking down of illusions and old dreams. Physically we are shown (or would be in a fully staged production) how a man can be transformed from a tatty aging transvestite to a goddess like image of beauty and then to a normal 50 year old man all in the space of an hour. At the same time the glorious illusion of the Havana of old is portrayed to us in exposition by Adoracion through his memories of what was or might have been. But the meat of the play is the transformation of Adoracion's view of his nephew Ismael, just as everything else in Adoracion's life the Ismael he interacts with is an illusion. We see people as a mixture of what they want us to see and how we want to see them, rarely as who they really are. Adoracion thinks Ismael is a painter and someone who understands him, someone to perhaps carry on the torch and also a member of the family who can accept his flamboyant gay cross-dressing uncle. In the end he is faced with reality, something he has never been inclined to enjoy, that his nephew is a man of flaws and petty deceits and less than savoury habits. That he chooses Isaac over his uncle, that Isaac chooses Ismael, that they both choose the new Havana.
It was an enjoyable play although it didn't leave me in a desperate state of wanting to see it again immediately like San Diego did. But then that was a very different kind of play and much more layered, doesn't make it better but it does leave you with a hell of a lot more to try and figure out and I'm rather fond of that. Ian McKellen was, of course, wonderful. The other actors were very good too. And I wouldn't mind seeing it fully staged.
Afterwards everyone went to the bar and Jo and I hung around there until virtually everyone had left. Ian McKellen, Hans Matheson, the writer and his boyfriend Cheri (sp?) were some of the last to leave. Despite this Jo and I barely exchanged two words with Mr McKellen. I must admit I find him rather intimidating. I borrowed a lighter off him for Jo and as he left I went up just to say how much I liked the play and shake his (and Hans) hand. I talked a little more to the writer and his boyfriend but only a little. I think there were quite a few famous faces about although I'm terminally bad at that sort of thing. The one person I recognised for sure was Richard Wilson (who played Victor Meldrew in One Foot In The Grave). I wouldn't have minded talking to some of the actors about the play but I guess I didn't want to enough to try and butt in on them talking to other people, so I didn't. It's a shame really cause I'd love the chance to just chat to Ian McKellen but there were clearly a lot of people there he knew very well and I didn't want to be that annoying random stranger who tries to talk to people she doesn't know, cause I kinda suck at doing that and I really couldn't think of anyway to actually start a conversation with him.
Jo and I were actually invited to a party at the theatre tomorrow night by the writers boyfriend, who was absolutely lovely and had the same colour hair as me, before they fly back to Cuba on Sunday, but I rather suspect the random invitation will not be enough to get us through the door. Although I may stop by and see anyway if I'm still in town tomorrow evening.
More info: Trio was part of the Cuba Real Season at the Royal Court and part of the Genesis Project's International Playwrights Season 2004. Basically the Royal Court did a whole week of readings of new cuban plays and other cuban themed events. Trio was directed by Richard Wilson.
Norge Espinosa Mendoza was born in Santa Clara and is a published poet, critic and playwright. He works as the Resident Dramaturg at Teatro Publico in Havana. He most recent play ICARUS ws staged there and won the Critics Prize of 2003. Norge has been part of the Royal Court Cuban Playwrights Projects since 2002 and received a British Council Bursary to attend the Royal Court International Residency in the Summer of 2003. |
