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Havana Journal, 2004 Intar at Theater for the New City Reviewed by Ron Cohen April 05, 2010
Dialects fly fast and furious in "Havana Journal, 2004," Eduardo Machado's patchy but provocative new play, in which the Cuban-born American playwright once again revisits his native land with a mixture of love and wrath. This time around the visitor is Ruth, a Columbia University professor and a deeply unhappy radical who describes herself as being "left of Jane Fonda" during the Vietnam War and now—in 2004—feels obsolete. We first see her in her office spilling choler into a tape recorder as she rails against her privileged students aiming for master's degrees in fiction writing, the Republican administration, and a lover who has recently dumped her. The scene then shifts to Havana, where Ruth is on a summer visit defying the U.S. embargo against Cuban tourism. On a mission to deliver funds to the male conductor of an all-female classical orchestra, this dashing character reignites her idealism. But the high-mindedness Ruth sees in this man proves to be illusory. She returns to New York even more deeply embittered, until a late-night meeting with the janitor cleaning her office—a victim of Russian oppression—seems to awaken in her a new and cathartic sense of compassion. |
A CurtainUp Review
Havana Journal, 2004
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But I've come to change. I know I have to change. See something different. So I can get my voice back. — Ruth. |
Ruth, portrayed by Crystal Field, is a blowsy, angry and disgruntled 70-something radical English professor at Columbia University with a lamentable weakness for younger men. Lonely and desperately hanging on to her left-wing dogma, her relief comes from speaking into her tapes, kept locked in a desk drawer. Havana Journal, 2004 is a record of Ruth's escapade to Cuba seeking companionship of others who share her beliefs. What she learns there, and doesn't learn, is the raison d'etre for this loquacious play by Eduardo Machado, playwright and Artistic Director of INTAR Theatre
The year is 2004. Ruth disdains George W. Bush's administration, United States politics, capitalism and the CIA. Director Stefanie Sertich manages to create an aura of uncertainty and insecurity befitting Ruth's paranoid hatred. Maruti Evans' set is simple—, an open stage with a dais, some furniture and a doorframe for entrances and exits. Three men, who when not in the scene sit around the dais with earphones in their ears, silently add to the secretive ambiance.
The play opens in Ruth's office at Columbia as she angrily reads her students' disappointing stories. Tired and discouraged, she takes swigs from the bottle of vodka in her desk drawer. When Ivan (David Skeist), an expatriate janitor from the USSR, comes in to clean her office, she dismisses him. Everyone has disappointed her and she is eager for her trip to Cuba.
Ivan comments, "From far away everything looks pretty". That seems true enough when Ruth gets to El Malecon, a seaside boulevard in Havana, Cuba where she is seduced by the sounds of the ocean, Cuba's sensual spirit and social equity, as well as by her conversation with a handsome Cuban, Reynaldo (Juan Javier Cardenas). Besides a physical attractionthey share a hatred of American politics.
Reynaldo says he is a serious composer, but what is his game? We may see clearly that he cannot be trusted, but Ruth is under his spell.
Political wordplay continues to drive the story. Later that day Reynaldo meets Tom (Liam Torres), an American tourist. Or is he? Perhaps Tom is a spy for the United States. Perhaps they are both spies. Tom tells Reynaldo only that he is a religious man who is interested in helping Cubans for a price, "communication.". He offers Reynaldo a book to read. It's the weighty, Moby Dick , with dollar bills taped on each page.
The linguistic fencing picks up in the evening as Ruth relaxes in the Nacional Hotel bar and speaks into her tape recorder. When Tom approaches her, she rebuffs him as another American tourist until he tells her he is here to meet his lover, a Cuban who cannot leave the country andasks Ruth for help.
No one is what he seems. But it becomes especially difficult to accept Ruth's combination of suspicion and naiveté.
Several months later, just before the election, we find Ruth back in her office at Columbia, still frustrated, still bitterly venting into her tape recorder. When Ivan comes in to clean, she admits she does not understand anything. Nor do we.
Crystal Field is convincing as Ruth— maddening, sympathetic, often difficult to watch in her alternating patterns of disappointment and trust. She is ruled by her lonely frustrations, believing anything that supports her views. Juan Javier Cardenas as Reynaldo weaves his various tales as smoothly and endlessly as the sounds of the sea waves. Liam Torres portrays Tom persuasively as a player trying to reel in Reynaldo and Ruth however he can. References to Yemaya, West African goddess of creation, add to the Cuban dichotomy of spiritualism and politics. Costumes by Michael Bevins serve the characters well.
In 90-minutes of theatrical discourse, the dialogue is unnaturally jerky and sluggishly repetitious, slowing the pace. The point is made and repeated as characters manipulate each other. In the final scene, as Ruth and Ivan reveal some confidences, cracks appear in her protective shield. "I'm beginning to understand", she tells him, obviously close to accepting the complications of idealism. Do not, however, expect any neat, tied up or direct answers in this play, nor any moments of intriguing drama.
first impressions
Friday, June 17, 2005
The Oregonian
"ELECTRA": Temporarily suspending its mission to offer ancient Greek plays in a style that comes as close as possible to what the Greeks may have experienced when going to the theater 2,500 years ago, the Classic Greek Theater of Oregon presents Stefanie Sertich's provocative, energetic, modern take on Sophocles' "Electra."
Sertich sets the play during the recent Croat-Serbian war. Yet she remains true to the Sophoclean core, which explores intensely primal passions: hatred culminating in matricide. That doesn't mean the Balkan setting is irrelevant, but that the real concern of this production is how the ever-repeating pattern of vengeance and violence colors human history.
To this end, Sertich makes some thoughtful but modest additions to the text -- for instance, adding two characters not in the original: Agamemnon and Iphigenia, the daughter whose sacrifice by Agamemnon became the motivation for Clytemnestra's murderous deeds.
Sertich's "Electra" is imaginatively conceived ... there are good performances here. Rather than offering us a larger-than-life Greek heroine, Michelle Hurtubise gives us an Electra who may sometimes be whiny and sometimes bratty, but is always recognizably real. This especially pays off at the production's end: As the long-awaited vengeance finally takes place, Hurtubise movingly conveys the overwhelming horror that this youthful Electra experiences when she sees the results of her blood-thirst.
Sertich's choreography is particularly strong. Whether ripping through space or methodically pounding the floor with feet and hands, the five-woman chorus's vivid movements give powerful expression to the message that, unfortunately, the beat goes on -- that in our modern wars, we continue to play out the same ancient story.
-- Richard Wattenberg Special to The Oregonian
©2005 The Oregonian
Review of "Darkstep and Dawning"
BY STEFFEN SILVIS
Willamette Week, Dec 24, 2002
I've never been wild about Matthew Zrebski's plays, [...] But his latest play, which could actually be an early work, shows he is capable of writing with some depth. [...] The story is quite interesting - the effect a young woman has on the lives of two men- and director Stefanie Sertich injects a quiet intensity that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. The ending is somewhat convoluted but still effective, and performances by Todd Van Voris, Michelle Seaton and the excellent Neal Starbird are strong. Another worthwhile set design by Robert Tollefson is an added bonus.
Intense ‘Money Shot’ delivers goods
BY JANINE ROBBEN
The Portland Tribune, Dec 25, 2001
Former Portlander Carole J. Dane came back from New York where she works for a bank to feed her body and writes plays to feed her soul for the world premiere of her play “Money Shot” at Stark Raving Theatre.
“Money Shot,” tells a Rashomon-like tale of two American documentary filmmakers in Bosnia. They’re after the behind-the-scenes story of an award-winning, world-famous photograph or “money shot” that depicts a woman, Claire, intervening to keep a soldier from executing a little boy.
“Money Shot” is a distressing, haunting, intense and thought-provoking play, solidly performed by the three actors who make up the cast: Joseph Fisher, Darcy Lynne and Rafael Untalan.
The plot of “Money Shot” revolves around the essential question: What is truth?
“Every single person can have a different idea of what truth is, and it can still be true for them,” an audience member observed at a post-premiere discussion with Dane and the play’s directors, Jan Powell and Stefanie Sertich.
Stark Raving Theatre, which bills itself as the Northwest’s leading producer of new works, is the first theater to stage “Money Shot.” The play isn’t perfect the first 10 minutes, at least on opening night, didn’t introduce the story as much as keep the audience from getting to it. But it, and Stark Raving’s production, are very, very engaging theater. Dane may be one playwright who actually will get to quit her day job.
