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Set by the seaside in Andalusia, Spain, Emiliano, a painter, is visited by his long-estranged daughter Marina. Father and daughter fall blindly in love with Karim, a Moroccan immigrant. Paquita, a former lover of Emiliano, reveals other secrets and unrequited loves, as the restless ghost of the legendary poet Federico García Lorca still wanders through the streets and converses with the living, trying to make his way back to life.
BY José Abreu Felippe, El Nuevo Herald
04 DE AGOSTO DE 2015 04:05 PM
Si tuviera que escoger dos palabras que me ayudaran a definir Belleza del padre, la pieza del Premio Pulit
zer de Teatro 2003, Nilo Cruz, que bajo su dirección se presenta en OnStage Blackbox del Miami-Dade County Auditorium, en una producción de Alexa Kuve para Arca Images y MDCA, serían magia y poesía.
Ambas empiezan por manifestarse en la sugerente escenografía de Fernando Teijeiro, en la que, tras una alfombra que delimita el espacio de un hogar, cuelgan armoniosamente marcos de diferentes dimensiones. Esta magia y poesía continúan luego en otros detalles, embellecidos por un estupendo trabajo de luces (Carlos Repilado), como una lluvia de pétalos de rosa, la figura que posa y recuerda la de joven con ánfora de una postal antigua o la fogata festejando a San Juan, donde se quema todo lo malo.
Hay un marco apoyado sobre el suelo y en él, sentado artísticamente, está el poeta Federico García Lorca (Ariel Texidó), al parecer, una de las obras en las que trabaja el pintor Emiliano (Francisco Gattorno), aunque hay otra, cubierta por un paño, reposando sobre un caballete. Lorca conversa e interactúa con Emiliano, es un muerto muy vivo, juguetón, travieso, divertido, aunque a veces algo, un sonido violento por ejemplo, hace que se palpe su camisa ensangrentada. Emiliano está ansioso, espera la llegada de una hija, Marina (Camila Duarte) a la que prácticamente no conoce y que desatará el conflicto al enamorarse de Karim (Roberto San Martín), un joven emigrante marroquí que, como muchos otros salió de su país en busca de mejor vida y quizás también de la familia que nunca tuvo, que ahora vive en la casa y que es, por desgracia, el amante de su padre. Karim, no obstante, está casado con Paquita (Anna Silvetti), pero no conviven, es un matrimonio para ayudarlo con la legalización de sus papeles. Generosa que es la Paquita.
Con este quinteto de estupendos actores, Nilo Cruz desata la poesía y la magia. Texidó está espectacular y brilla con luz propia, en una de las mejores actuaciones de su carrera. Al principio solo Emiliano lo ve, pero a medida que avanza la obra, no se sabe bien por qué, los demás también lo perciben y le hablan y él se crece. Silvetti, espectacular en su cándida Paquita, perfecta en su personaje, llena de gracia, de auténtica sencillez y también, de picardía y mucho salero andaluz. Gattorno construye un padre que se debate entre el amor filial y el amor carnal, muy creíble. San Martín está muy bien como el joven entre dos fuegos. El personaje proyecta en su pasión cierto desamparo que lo torna vulnerable. Duarte en su extraordinario debut aporta frescura y ganas de vivir. Magnífica es su escena final.
Belleza del padre es una pieza muy hermosa. Los dos actos con intermedio se nos van volando. Y lo lamentamos, quisiéramos que durara más, seguir disfrutando de la magia que tomó cuerpo sobre el escenario. De la poesía. Aunque en mi opinión la pieza no alcanza a provocar el impacto y la solidez de otras de Cruz –estoy pensando en Lorca con vestido verde, por ejemplo, donde también aparece el poeta– sí es una de las más bellas. Será porque refleja y resume la belleza del padre.
‘Belleza del padre’, funciones de jueves a sábado, 8:30 p.m. y domingo 2 p.m. OnStage Blackbox del Miami Dade County Auditorium, 2901 W Flager St., Miami. Tickets en arcaimages.org y la taquilla del teatro. (786) 327-4539. La obra está estrictamente prohibida para menores de 18 años
By Christine Dolen, Miami Herald
JULY 31, 2015 05:40 PM
Nilo Cruz’s play Beauty of the Father had its world premiere at New Theatre in Coral Gables in 2004, less than a year after Anna in the Tropics (another New Theatre premiere) won the Miami playwright the Pulitzer Prize in drama. It went on to have a life in regional theater, also getting a New York production by Manhattan Theater Club in 2006, and its busy author moved on to other projects.
The play has now come back to South Florida, but in another form.
Beauty of the Father was written and previously performed in English. Belleza del padre is a new Spanish-language version of the play (the translation is by Cruz and his first mentor, Teatro Prometeo founder Teresa María Rojas). It’s playing just through Aug. 8 at the On.Stage Black Box at Miami-Dade County Auditorium. And it’s exquisite.
Cruz has shaped the production in several ways, as playwright and co-translator, co-designing the sound with Otis Hooper and, in his ongoing collaboration with producer Alexa Kuve of Arca Images, as director. His vision, realized by set designer Fernando Teijeiro, lighting designer Carlos Repilado and costume designer Gema Valdés, is simple, powerful and emotionally deep.
It’s also accessible even if you have little or no knowledge of Spanish. The theater provides assisted listening devices with simultaneous translation into English by Irene Benítez and Luis Martínez. The two don’t attempt to replicate the actors’ performance choices, but you can watch those unfold without the distraction of trying to read supertitles, and you can still hear the Spanish dialogue and inflections.
The cast features four well-known actors with extensive credits in telenovelas, TV, film and Spanish-language theater, as well as a recent Academy of Arts & Minds grad on her way to study at New York Conservatory for the Dramatic Arts. Cruz blends his company beautifully, emphasizing the sensuality that is as much a part of life as the sea-salt air in the little Spanish town of Salobreña.
Belleza del padre centers on a complicated father-and-child reunion, one watched over by the ghost of the murdered poet and playwright Federico García Lorca (Ariel Texidó).
Painter Emiliano (Francisco Gattorno) is living in Salobreña in a sort of ménage à trois with Paquita (Anna Silvetti), an earthy woman who adores him but describes sex as “a summerhouse I closed up for the winter,” and Karim (Roberto San Martín), a young Moroccan man who makes Emiliano’s blood run hot. So that Karim can stay in the country, Paquita has married him, but her heart belongs to Emiliano.
Another triangle forms when Marina (Camila Duarte), the daughter Emiliano left behind when she was still a little girl, arrives still deeply mourning her mother’s death. Emiliano wants to forge a new relationship with his resentful, now-grown daughter, but the pain of his long-ago abandonment and her fresh loss stings. Emotionally raw and vulnerable, she too falls for Karim, who returns her passion. Papá isn’t happy.
Lorca, a deeply influential figure for Cruz (Lorca in a Green Dress is another of his plays), is for Emiliano a ghostly, playful fellow artist who offers advice and observations, confiding, “Love has always been a thick forest that I’ve never been able to enter, and all I’ve known is the promise of the trees.”
Cruz’s writing is full of symbolism and imagery, and so is his production of Belleza del padre. Twice, rose petals fall gently from the heavens like a kind of scarlet, fragrant snow. Lorca, briefly visible to everyone, gambols by the sea, hanging onto a white balloon that he sees as “the moon on a leash.” Emiliano’s “paintings” are empty golden rectangles that frame the actors.
Duarte, the youngest of the performers, crafts an alluring, empathetic child-woman who journeys emotionally from anger to lust to compassion. Silvetti’s Paquita is a kind of earth mother whose attraction to Emiliano, sexual or not, is palpable. As Karim, San Martín is mysterious, seductive, hard to pin down. Texidó powerfully evokes the artistic exhilaration and tragedy of Lorca’s life, and Gattorno’s alluring Emiliano is both lustily charismatic and frustrated.
Cruz, whose play Tsunami (a collaboration with Michiko Kitayama) will have its world premiere at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center in September, is a playwright with a singular, intoxicating voice. It’s grand to luxuriate in it, and in his vision, again — in Spanish or English — in Belleza del padre.
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